Eerie, electronic, experimental
Everyone’s Crushed is an apt title for Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes’ newest album. The band’s earlier releases have played with the dissonant, electronic style that dominates Everyone’s Crushed, but the album is far more experimental and less melodic than previous work. Meant as a reflection of the bleakness and chaos of the times we live in, the new release is undeniably well-executed but makes for an eerie, unsettling listen.
The tracks on Everyone’s Crushed tend to feel more like soundscapes than songs; the music buzzes with layered electronic instrumentation, shudders with glitch effects and collapses into dissonance. This isn’t always entirely pleasant – “Structure” opens with the frantic beeping of a malfunctioning computer, and “Barley” features a backtrack reminiscent of a fire truck siren running low on batteries. Pleasant or unpleasant, however, the songs do carry a riveting energy. The music is at times fun and campy, like in the keyboard heavy, sci-fi influenced “Out There.” At other times, the album swings into horror: “Open” thrums with an eerie buzz and the sound effects wailing in the background of “Everyone’s Crushed” could be anything from guitar to keyboard to distorted screaming.
With such unsettling and at times unapproachable instrumentation, listeners are left grasping for familiarity within the music. Rachel Brown’s singing serves as a safe haven; soft and intimate, Brown’s careful pronunciation is almost reminiscent of acoustic artists like Adrianne Lenker or The Moldy Peaches. Swinging between ethereal harmonies and spoken-word segments, the vocals serve as a point of beauty in an otherwise chaotic environment. When Brown’s voice distorts in “Everyone’s Crushed”, listeners are left with the chilling sense that the only familiarity within the album has been lost, leaving the listener abandoned in a collapsing world. As the album progresses, its message grows clearer: these songs aren’t just ambiance or a possible soundtrack for an experimental horror film. Each song is experimental horror in and of itself. Even the lyrics are fragmented and stream-of-consciousness, adding to the album’s quality of being trapped in a dream.
In much the same way as the vocals, the album’s instrumentals play with the audience’s comfort and unease. Contrasted with the heavy use of electronic instrumentation, prominent bass lines groove the listener through “Out There,” “Everyone’s Crushed” and “Buy My Product,” making the album almost danceable. In addition, classical instrumentation is sometimes inserted in moments of quiet or poignance, such as the staccato cello in the background of “Everyone’s Crushed” and “14.” The effect is at once lonely and comforting, beautiful and sad, calling to mind a person sitting by a window watching the world end outside.
Everyone’s Crushed is a chilling listen, full of uneasy, churning instrumentation and a barrage of glitch effects. Despite its unconventional nature, however, the album is well-executed enough not to turn off those who are typically inclined towards more melodic musical styles. Saved from its own bleakness by moments of clarity and ethereality, the audience is never quite lost in the horror of Everyone’s Crushed, an album just as “pretty and violent, raw and indelible” as the world itself.
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