It’s A Beautiful Place - Water From Your Eyes
Released August 22 - Via Matador Records
By Mark Velazquez
Seeing Water From Your Eyes live made their music feel physical and uncontained. Listening to It’s a Beautiful Place on record is something else entirely. Where their performances often feel volatile, the album operates in a more controlled chaos, letting ideas stretch without losing their shape. It feels less like documentation and more like design, an environment that’s been carefully assembled rather than something happening in real time.
One of the most striking choices on the record is its structure. The opening and closing tracks mirror each other, creating a loop that makes the album feel less like a straight line and more like a circuit. When the final moments echo the beginning, it gives the sense that the album doesn’t really end so much as reset. That decision reinforces how immersive the project feels. You don’t simply finish it. You’re placed back at the start.
That cyclical quality fits an album the band has loosely described as orbiting ideas of aliens and dinosaurs. Whether taken literally or not, the record carries a kind of otherworldly logic. Songs often feel like transmissions rather than statements, drifting between abstraction, tension, and brief moments of clarity. There’s a strange comfort in how little the album explains itself.
“You Don’t Believe in God?” stands out as one of the clearest expressions of that approach. Its largely instrumental focus allows the band to build feeling without leaning on narrative. The track moves through repetition and texture, creating anticipation that never fully resolves. It feels hypnotic and uneasy at the same time, and it captures the album’s emotional center particularly well.
Across the record, Water From Your Eyes play with contrast. Many of the singles and individual tracks hit immediately, pulling the listener in with sharp ideas and sudden shifts. But the album as a full piece takes longer to settle. It didn’t completely click for me on first listen. The cohesion revealed itself over time, in the way tracks speak to each other, how sounds reappear, and how pacing shapes attention. It’s an album that teaches you how it wants to be heard.
Where the live versions of these songs can sprawl and unravel, the recorded versions feel more deliberate. There is still unpredictability, but it’s guided. The edges are shaped. That restraint gives the album its replay value. Details surface gradually, from small production choices to recurring textures that only become obvious with repetition.
I find myself listening to It’s a Beautiful Place in two very different settings. Sometimes it plays while I’m working at the record shop, letting its unease and momentum live in the background. Other times it’s strictly headphones music, where the layers and repetition become more absorbing. The album holds in both spaces, which speaks to how well its chaos is contained.
It’s a Beautiful Place doesn’t present itself as a set of answers. It functions more like a system. A loop. A controlled environment where tension, abstraction, and rhythm are allowed to coexist. Over time, what first feels disorienting starts to feel intentional. That’s where the album becomes most compelling.
Tracklist —
It’s a Beautiful Place
One Small Step – 0:26
Life Signs – 4:32
Nights in Armor – 3:09
Born 2 – 4:24
You Don’t Believe in God? – 1:25
Spaceship – 4:49
Playing Classics – 5:53
It’s a Beautiful Place – 0:50
Blood on the Dollar – 2:40
For Mankind – 0:59
Total runtime: ~28 minutes
