Eyes

Best of Naked Eyes offers 15 tracks of the synth pop duo's best moments from their two U.S. albums, 1983's Naked Eyes and 1984's Burning Bridges. The collection is surpassed by the more extensive Very Best Of from 1994, but is notable for the inclusion of one track, "Could Be," which the second collection excluded.

Life is horribly dark right now. And yet, it is not unfunny. That’s the sentiment that animates Water From Your Eyes on their new album, and first for Matador, ‘Everyone’s Crushed,’ out May 26. On the follow-up to the Brooklyn duo’s 2021 breakthrough, ‘Structure,’Rachel Brown (they/them) and Nate Amos (he/him) find silliness and fatalism dancing in a frantic lockstep, using heart palpitating rhythms and absurdist, deadpan lyrics to convey stories of personal and societal unease. Described by Brown as Water From Your Eyes’ most collaborative record ever, it’s a swollen contusion of an album: experimental pop music that’s pretty and violent, raw and indelible.

Sometimes it feels like you hear a Bright Eyes song with your whole body. From Conor Oberst’s early recordings in an Omaha basement in 1995 all the way up to 2020, Bright Eyes’ music tries to unravel the impossible tangles of dissent: personal and political, external and internal. It’s a study of the beauty in unsteadiness in all its forms – in a voice, beliefs, love, identity, and what fills up the spaces in-between. And in so many ways, it’s just about searching for a way through.

It’s hard to believe this album wasn’t made a long time ago, actually, since blues pianist Pinetop Perkins and drummer and harmonica player Willie "Big Eyes" Smith have worked together frequently in the past 40 some years. Perkins replaced the legendary pianist Otis Spann in Muddy Waters' band in 1969 when Smith was the drummer in the ensemble, and later Perkins and Smith formed the Legendary Blues Band in the 1980s. Perkins was 96 years old when the sessions for Joined at the Hip were recorded, but one wouldn’t know it, and Smith, now out from behind the drum kit (his son, Kenny Smith, plays drums here), concentrates on his harp blowing and handles most of the vocals. The result is a solid Chicago blues record, one that feels like it could have been tracked anytime in the past four decades…

The former Muddy Waters drummer Willie "Big Eyes" Smith turns in an enjoyable, but unremarkable, set of Chicago blues with Bag Full of Blues. Supported by Pinetop Perkins and Fabulous Thunderbirds harpist Kim Wilson, Smith runs through a set of mid-tempo blues, combining some competent originals with covers like "Baby Please Don't Go." There's not many solos - Wilson mainly shines, while guitarists James Wheeler, Nick Moss, and Gareth Best all contribute small, pithy leads - but the grooves are nice and relaxed. Bag Full of Blues may not be a jaw-dropper, but it does have some fine moments.

“The Last Viking” is the 2020-monumental-piece of LEAVES’ EYES. The setting of the symphonic metal masterpiece couldn’t be more tremendous. With their cult-albums “Vinland Saga” (2005) and “King of Kings” (2015) they already turned Leif Erikssons discovery of America and the life of Norway’s first king into music. Now, LEAVES’ EYES bring the Viking Sagas to their bombastic finale.