The first time I heard (of) Water From Your Eyes was in 2024 when they recorded this cover of Warm Storm, a song by Howe Gelb of the band Giant Sand.

Both bands use crusty, distorted guitars to embellish their sound. In the case of Giant Sand that’s a  sound that began with a fusion of punk and country music, and went on to take in folk, jazz, blues and much more; little wonder Gelb titled one of their albums All Over The Map.

Meanwhile Water From Your Eyes – originally a duo of Nate Amos and Rachel Brown – have trodden a similarly serpentine path from folk to krautrock with many stops along the way.

Starting out in Chicago a decade ago, taking their name from New Order, they are now based in Brooklyn and have added two more members for live performances in Al Nardo and Bailey Wollowitz. 

They say their influences include the painter Mark Rothko and Scott Walker’s Climate Of Hunter, which partially explains why I like them.

This song, Warm Storm, comes from a Gelb solo album called Dreaded Brown Recluse and is quite different from his original version, which is recorded live Then again, you never know what you’ll get when he performs his own songs either. 

By coincidence I went to see Howe perform a few days ago at MOTH Club, where he sat or stood behind a keyboard with an electric guitar slung around his neck.

Rambling comic monologues would be followed by sandpaper-voiced ballads at the piano, interspersed with deafening squalls of heavily distorted guitar… like this one. I loved it, though the guy next to me, who had bought a ticket on spec, was somewhat bemused.

Trivia fact: Nate Amos grew up on a rural mountainside in Vermont and likes to go by the sobriquet This Is Lorelei.