“Contact, contact, all this shattered impact, shake three”.

My introduction to Water From Your Eyes, and by extension, their second LP, was lead single ‘Life Signs’ which struck a nerve in me. An incredibly good nerve at that. Lead singer Rachel Brown may have a monotonal delivery, but their performance is just one key of a playful puzzle. The sound of Life Signs was a contradictory double-edged sword. It was a song that sounded wholly complete, yet simultaneously, a song that was brimming with details, a 5/4 time signature that seemed to reinvent the track in its own light, a searing guitar solo that drills into the listener and cavalcades with vigour.

It made sense when I learned that this was the first song Rachel Brown wrote with the intention of taking these songs somewhere “Bigger than a basement”. It’s a fitting approach for a band’s second LP, where the drive is stereotypically to refine an established sound and push to be bigger.

That quote led me to work out what stuck out about WFYE’s “It’s A Beautiful Place”. It’s a record that pushes the band’s quirky sound into different directions, with no seeming consistency. That isn’t a terrible thing though, a diverse listen is welcomed if the array of songs remain high-quality. And boy does this album not disappoint. A track like the cavernous ‘Born 2’ drowns you in its guitar-laden sci-fi utopia. The next, ‘Spaceships’ is warping you in its loopy and vast rhythms, it’s an escape of a song. The record also has little instrumentals scattered throughout. ‘You Don’t Believe In God?’ precedes the aforementioned Spaceships, and sounds heavenlike, depending on the listen, it’s either a peaceful comedown, or it invokes a sense of nostalgia.

Rachel Brown and Nate Amos find themselves creating an album that lulls you into a retreat. Each track, whether they are peaceful listens or raucous rides, there’s an element of looking into the self, picking apart our characters and the world around us. “Nights In Armor” is a tight groove, with a refrain that shuts the instrumental out when Rachel speaks, and an ending where they ask someone “Fight me, I’m on fire.”

The best of this playful bunch is second single ‘Playing Classics’, a near six-minute joy of a track, from the opening drums, the sweeping, hypnotic piano that graces its way into the song around the one-minute mark. The song loops you into its groove, then hits you with that driving guitar riff that’s become a recurring element of this record. All of this coalesces into arguably the band’s most complete track to date.

There are three more tracks to round out this record, but only one isn’t an instrumental, as the guitar laden title track sweeps into ‘Blood On The Dollar’, which is arguably the simplest track on the album, the song structure is simple, and the track doesn’t veer into a quirky direction. That’s not to say it isn’t welcome, not every closer has to be a stage show event, sometimes it just needs to ease the listener away. ‘For Mankind’ loops back into the instrumental heard on opener ‘One Small Step’, bringing us back to the beginning.

It’s A Beautiful Place is, well it’s exactly that. If anything, beautiful isn’t the only fitting descriptor. It’s unique, it’s quirky, it’s adventurous. It’s all these things and so much more.

Water From Your Eyes: It’s A Beautiful Place – Out 22 August 2025 (Matador)

From Your Eyes – “Playing Classics” (Official Music Video)