If there is anything that Nate Amos and Rachel Brown from the elastic, warped-pop duo Water From Your Eyes want you to know about their new album Structure, it’s that they were “in on the joke the whole time.”
This might need some clearing up.
Throughout their partnership, which has produced six full-length albums, Amos and Brown have strived to create densely-layered pop music that can require footnotes for clarification’s sake. They both adore making jokes within their music to amuse each other, but it doesn’t always land for casual listeners who aren’t inclined to go searching for clues.
“It’s weird calling the album ‘a joke.’ It feels wildly inaccurate, but it’s definitely funny,” said Amos of Structure when I caught up with the duo one day last month on both of their lunch breaks. “It’s definitely intentional that way. It shouldn’t be taken too seriously. And sometimes, it kind of presents itself as a very serious album.”
When looking at the band’s name alone, it is a pretty humorous idea. Why not just go for the simplicity of The Tear Drops? But the longer explanation brings to mind some brooding messagboard messiah overthinking the name for their musical outlet, which is hilarious. This is the band who after releasing their 2019 full-length Somebody Else’s Song, they followed it up with a collection of covers two years later titled Somebody Else’s Songs. Not to mention the three track album 33:44 that has a run time of … ah, fuck. Do I have to explain any further?
During our phone call, they were both ready to deflate any sort of ballooned pretentiousness that might be given off by their dizzying and complex music. Amos wanted to clear up that they seem to come off that way with their presentation and with how they may have come off in previous interviews they have done.
On one hand, they both have described Structure as a sly parody of the “concept album” — “It’s weird to say that there is any art that isn’t conceptual,” Amos mused. But on the other, the two are masters of building towering hook-filled songs, sometimes propelled upward by lessons in layering from electronic music, and, often, dismantled or obscured by jarring passages of harsh noise and freeform experimentation.
For Brown, it’s usually something that surprises Brown in it’s bluntness that breaks them down. “Personally, what makes me laugh the most aren’t necessarily funny but things that really hurt,” they add, “like when somebody says something that was a little bit too true.”
It’s the straight-faced delivery and intense commitment to the bit that makes these humorous musical juxtapositions pay off on Structure. The punchlines aren’t fed down your gullet by a tube, and that’s how Amos and Brown like it. “That’s why I love Randy Newman and I fucking hate Bo Burnham,” says Amos, summarizing with a laugh. You see, there is a stark difference between music that is funny and comedy music. There needs to be a spectrum of emotion that allows the jokes to sneak up on the listener. If you start out looking for chuckles, then everyone loses.
“It’s the same thing as being like, ‘Well, I’m gonna make music that’s only scary,’” Amos continued, “Art requires balance. And so all music should be heavy and also funny. If you’re just like, ‘I’m gonna make specifically funny music,’ I mean, that’s great if you’re like Rafi or someone like that. Rafi’s not out there trying to spook children. He’s just singing about bananas and shit. But if you’re trying to be an artist, I feel like being like ‘I’m specifically funny’, at least in the context of music, is a weird way to go. That’s why I got to give props to Tim Heidecker because he’s [going] the opposite direction as a comedian now. His albums have been slowly getting more and more serious. There’s definitely still funny stuff about them. But it’s also very real songwriting and the more you pay attention, the more weighty it becomes when you realize how balanced it actually is. I think calling something ‘comedy music’, specifically, is kind of like dooming it because then it’s not allowed to be anything other than funny. Then it’s just like a human spectrum.”
While both Amos and Brown have their fair share of solo projects (This Is Lorelei, thanks for coming) outside of Water From Your Eyes, when the two come together there is a sense of gratification they feel they can’t get anywhere else. As Amos describes it, their process generally takes the form of muddying up the creative waters with as many musical ideas as they can possibly fit into a single song underneath Brown’s vocals and then sculpting down from there to find the finished product. Aside from the album’s sunny Carpenter’s indebted opener “When You’re Around”—which was written for a karaoke scene in a “coming of age indie film”— you gain the sense listening to Structure that there could be several different seismic melodies left on the cutting room floor for each track.
This practice comes into focus while listening to the two central pieces of the album; “Quotations” and “‘Quotations.’” On the first version, the seven-minute track only lets the listener find their rhythm after Amos’ blunt-force beat gives them no choice but to submit. In the ladder, the track reimagines the brutish original by creating an elliptical and angelic loop from Brown’s vocals and turning it into something as meditative and forward-moving as an early Arthur Russell song. It’s a stunning closer that hits harder after hearing the concept of its origins earlier on the record.
This beautiful re-working was Brown’s idea initially. “The album sounded mostly like a rough one,” Brown joked about Structure’s earlier impenetrable form. “We had to record the vocals with a different backing track. Because with the original ‘Quotations,’ I’m no musician. I have absolutely no idea what you’re asking of me. So Nate made a simpler backing track with a melody. It was really pretty and I remember [thinking] ‘I kind of want a different version of this.’ ”
The two were also in agreement that the album was in need of something on a more uplifting and less cluttered note. They also believed that it would leave an uneasy feeling concluding Structure with the 30-second spoken word piece “You’re Watching The Fly.”
“There was not much of a sense of closure,” adds Amos. “There is a third version of that song somewhere on my hard drive and I’ll probably never find it. It’s probably just as beautiful but it also doesn’t really matter. Two is enough.”
So in their efforts to get one last joke across at the expense of “conceptual art,” Amos and Brown landed on a call-back that found a way to tie everything on the record with a delicate bow. What a concept.
Make sure to check out Structure by Water From Your Eyes out on Wharf Cat Records, August 27th.