In anticipation of the release of Water From Your Eyes‘ latest album, It’s a Beautiful Place, which is due out this Friday, the band — comprised of Nate Amos and Rachel Brown, and more recently guitarist Al Nardo and drummer Bailey Wollowitz — have shared “Nights in Armor”, a raucous and impressionistic slice of avant rock debris.
Prickly guitar lines and collapsing percussive landscapes fade in and out of view as Brown’s voice glides through the ensuing wreckage. There’s a lot of area to cover here, and the band make short work of exploring its extended geographies. It’s almost as if we’re tuning into different radio stations and giving each a moment to unveil its brief thesis before moving on to the next and then again to the next before cycling back through, anxious that we’ve missed something on our previous pass-through. It’s a fascinating approach and one that rewards repeated listens, giving up its secrets little by little.
“‘Nights In Armor’ started life as a weird little Lorelei [This is Lorelei is Nate Amos’ side project] song called ‘Grill’, explains Amos. “I always felt like the riff was cooler than the song, so I recycled it into a new track and added other instrumentation specifically meant to place the guitar part in a radically different context to see what other emotional roles it could play. I remember struggling with writing a vocal hook I was happy with and I’m pretty sure at a certain part I reversed it and built the bass line around the backwards melody.”
Watch the Jo Shaffer-directed video below.
A Beautiful Place is due out August 22 on Matador Records. You can pre-order the album here. Follow the band on X, Instagram and Facebook.
