Water From Your Eyes – Nights In Armor
On Friday, Water From Your Eyes will release It’s a Beautiful Place. Today, listen to the album’s ebullient and expansive third single “Nights in Armor” and watch the Jo Shaffer-directed video.
“Nights In Armor started life as a weird little Lorelei song called ‘Grill,’ explains WFYE’s Nate 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.”
The band – now a four-piece on stage with Al Nardo (guitar) and Bailey Wollowitz (drums) – will support It’s A Beautiful Place with extensive North American and European headline tours. The former launches September 22 in Philadelphia and runs through November 2 in Denver, including stops at Bowery Ballroom in New York, Lodge Room in Los Angeles, and Sleeping Village in Chicago. The latter kicks off on November 13 at Village Underground in London and ends December 7 at Lisbon’s Musicbox.
The duo finished It’s a Beautiful Place last summer, just as they have every other WFYE release: in Amos’s bedroom, under the watchful eye of a tattered Robin Williams poster from the Mork & Mindy era. “Basically,” jokes Amos, “Robin is like a silent member of Water From Your Eyes.” The first single, “Life Signs,” however, was shaped around the dynamics of a full-blooded live group: “When you’re playing with a band you tend to write with one in mind – this was the first time I wrote anything for WFYE imagining us playing anywhere bigger than a basement”, he observes.
“Nights In Armor” is introduced with a whirlwind of Frusciante Stratocaster bliss. ‘Born 2’ is a worldbuilding guitar onslaught, its lyrics channeling a preoccupation with sci-fi literature and political theory as Brown’s voice glides overhead: “the world is so common / and born to become / something else”. “I’ve been carrying around The Dispossessed (a 1974 anarchist utopian novel by Ursula K. Le Guin) and There Is No Unhappy Revolution (a 2017 non-fiction by Marcello Tarì) in my backpack for well over a year now,” Brown says. “They have been to four different continents and across almost every state line. While writing lyrics for the album, I skimmed both books quite thoroughly.”
Throughout It’s A Beautiful Place is a clear sense of a band who have honed their curveballs into home runs. Looming and melancholy, wide-eyed and petrified, it’s Blade Runner with a touch of WALL-E, it’s Kubrick and Asimov with a hint of Jay and Silent Bob. These are songs that look outward, conscious of our smallness and questioning our place in the universe while admiring the surrounding beauty.
LIVE DATES
NORTH AMERICAN HEADLINE TOUR
Sept 22 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s ^
Sept 23 – Washington, DC @ The Atlantis ^
Sept 24 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle Back Room ^
Sept 26 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl ^
Sept 27 – Nashville, TN @ Blue Room ^
Sept 28 – St Louis, MO @ Blueberry Hill ^
Sept 30 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St Entry ^
Oct 1 – Madison WI, @ High Noon Saloon ^
Oct 2 – Chicago IL, @ Sleeping Village ^
Oct 3 – Detroit MI, @ El Club ^
Oct 4 – Toronto, ON @ Project Nowhere ^
Oct 6 – Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz ^
Oct 7 – Amherst, MA @ The Drake ^
Oct 8 – Boston, MA @ The Sinclair ^
Oct 10 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom ^
Oct 21 – Austin TX @ Brushy Street Commons (fka Parish) #
Oct 22 – Dallas, TX @ Dada #
Oct 24 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sister Bar %
Oct 25 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Rebel Lounge %
Oct 26 – San Diego, CA @ Casbah %
Oct 27 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room %
Oct 29 – San Francisco, CA @ The Independent %
Oct 31 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios %
Nov 1 – Seattle, WA @ Madame Lou’s %
Nov 2 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret %
Nov 4 – Boise, ID @ Neurolux %
Nov 5 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court %
Nov 7 – Denver, CO @ Globe Hall %
^ w/ Her New Knife
# w/ Winter
% w/ Dutch Interior
EU HEADLINE TOUR
Nov 13th – London, UK @ Village Underground ^
Nov 14th – Manchester, UK @ YES ^
Nov 15th – Glasgow, UK @ The Rum Shack ^
Nov 16th – Dublin, IE @ The Workman’s Club ^
Nov 18th – Bristol, UK @ Strange Brew ^
Nov 20th – Brussels, BE @ Botanique Rotonde #
Nov 21st – Cologne, DE @ 674FM #
Nov 23rd – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso (Small Hall)
Nov 24th – Hamburg, DE @ Aalhaus #
Nov 25th – Copenhagen, DK @ Ideal Bar #
Nov 26th – Berlin, DE @ Lark #
Nov 28th – Munich, DE @ Import/Export #
Nov 29th – Milan, IT @ Arci Bellezza #
Nov 30th – Dudingen, CH @ Bad Bonn #
Dec 2nd – Paris, FR @ Boule Noire #
Dec 3rd – Lyon, FR @ Le Sonic #
Dec 5th – Barcelona, ES @ Sala Upload %
Dec 6th – Madrid, ES @ Sala Sol %
Dec 7th – Lisbon, PT @ Musicbox %
^ Morgan Garrett
# Silver Gore
% Heal
#waterfromyoureyes