Water From Your Eyes - “Track Five”

SXSW 2022 - OEB Score: 9; Popularity Index: 3

Pairs Well With…Fiery Furnaces, Dirty Projectors, Tune-Yards

Among the most adventurous records from SXSW artists this year, Water From Your Eyes’ Structure is a highly ambitious art-rock record that succeeds through the band’s committed experimentation. Ambient dream pop, industrial noise rock, lush twee pop, and more not only find influence on Structure, rather Water From Your Eyes take on completely different genres track to track. The Brooklyn duo have both a keen sense of melody and atmospherics, gliding gently on “When You’re Around” while taking the form of glitched-out rhythms and plucked string lines on the nearly seven-minute, pulsing meditation “My Love’s”. Water From Your Eyes even take the same song and reinvent it both musically and lyrically with “Quotations”, cut and splicing words and instrumentation, one exploring looped ambience while the other grinding, machine-like intensity. It’s a beautiful record in both the light and the dark, the band’s fifth in five years and a real benchmark release from these fascinating, future-facing artists. (Kevin McStravick)