Fox Theater

Hayley Williams is a 3x GRAMMY winning singer, songwriter and musician best known for her role as the frontperson of legendary rock band Paramore. With her incredible range and delivery, Billboard ranked her at #13 on their list of 50 Greatest Rock Singers of All Times saying, “when it comes to singers in contemporary rock, Hayley Williams reigns supreme.”  Frequently listed as a source of inspiration from contemporary performers as varied as Chappell Roan, Doechii and Billie Eilish – she’s also appeared on a wide variety of albums and singles as a collaborator and guest vocalist including Turnstile’s latest “Seein’ Stars”, Moses Sumney’s “I Like It I Like It,” and Taylor Swift’s “Castles Crumbling.” Swift went on to have Paramore open the first ever The Eras Tour show that debuted in Arizona and later they went on to open all dates on the European leg of her world tour.

At just 16 she brought the band to the masses with the release of their album All We Know Is Falling which was certified Gold and just celebrated its 20 year anniversary last week. The band’s breakthrough came with 2007’s Riot!, powered by the success of the 6X certified platinum single “Misery Business.” In 2009, Brand New Eyes solidified their place in the rock landscape. Paramore’s self-titled 2013 album marked a commercial and critical peak, with the platinum single “Ain’t It Fun” earning Paramore their first Grammy win for ‘Best Rock Song’ in 2015 and further nominations for ‘Best Rock Album.’ 2017’s After Laughter introduced a polished, ‘pop-influenced sound that continued to attract acclaim with the breakout single “Hard Times.” After a long hiatus, in 2023, they returned with This Is Why, a full grown, alternative-leaning record that earned the band two Grammy wins for ‘Best Alternative Song’ and ‘Best Rock Album’ making Paramore the first female-fronted rock band to ever win the category in its 31-year history.

It’s A Beautiful Place opens with zero-gravity instrumental ‘One Small Step’ – a fitting prelude for what is one giant leap for New York duo Water From Your Eyes. The album is a gleaming megalopolis, a satellite view of eras and musical forms, a reframing of the y2k songbook that is at once awe-struck and mindful of its place in the vastness. Short instrumental interludes serve as portals between towering, muscular songs. “It ended up being about time, dinosaurs and space,” says Nate Amos . “We wanted to present a wide range of styles in a way that acknowledges everything’s just a tiny blip.”

In the time since 2023’s Everyone’s Crushed, their Matador debut and critical breakout – which appeared in end of year lists by The New York Times, The Guardian, Pitchfork, NME, Vogue, Wired and Rolling Stone – Rachel Brown and Nate Amos have become a pillar of the city’s alternative music scene and one of its most revered underground exports. Live, they’ve expanded to a quartet, joining forces with guitarist Al Nardo and drummer Bailey Wollowitz of NYC duo Fantasy of a Broken Heart. They played huge stages supporting Interpol on tour, including in front of 160,000 fans in Mexico City. Back home, the band established a DIY boat show franchise on the East River, hosting friends at the heart of the city’s musical vanguard including YHWH Nailgun, Model/Actriz, Frost Children, and Kassie Krut. Brown released a new EP under their thanks for coming moniker, while Amos released an acclaimed full length under his This Is Lorelei solo project.

The duo recorded the bulk of It’s a Beautiful Place last summer, just as they have every other WFYE release: in Amos’s bedroom, under the watchful eye of a tattered Robin Williams poster from the Mork & Mindy era. “Basically,” jokes Amos, “Robin is like a silent member of Water From Your Eyes.” But this time, much of the writing and recording were shaped around the dynamics of a full-blooded live group: “When you’re playing with a band you tend to write with one in mind – this was the first time I wrote anything for WFYE imagining us playing anywhere bigger than a basement”, he observes.

True to this, ‘Life Signs’ awakens to existence with a nu-metal backbeat and a rhythmic vocal deadpan that wouldn’t be out of place in a 1997 MTV sequence nestled between Bran Van 3000 and Cake. It then takes a hard pivot into a signature WFYE chorus – cascading and celestial. ‘Nights In Armor’ is introduced with a whirlwind of Frusciante Stratocaster bliss leading into a vulnerable Brown soliloquy.

‘Born 2’ is a worldbuilding guitar onslaught, its lyrics channeling a preoccupation with sci-fi literature and political theory as Brown’s voice glides overhead: “the world is so common / and born to become / something else”. “I’ve been carrying around The Dispossessed (a 1974 anarchist utopian novel by Ursula K. Le Guin) and There Is No Unhappy Revolution (a 2017 non-fiction by Marcello Tarì) in my backpack for well over a year now,” Brown says. “They have been to four different continents and across almost every state line. While writing lyrics for the album, I skimmed both books quite thoroughly.”

Side A closes with instrumental interlude ‘You Don’t Believe In God?’. Both members come from a church-going upbringing, Brown having been raised Catholic and Amos Episcopalian. “I wanted to be a priest when I was little,” Brown recalls, “before I learned that you had to be born into a different kind of body to get to be the one who directly talks to God. It was there that they began to lose me, although I have retained some belief in something like God.” Amos adds: “Part of this record is about slowly becoming scared of god again after completely rejecting religion”.

‘Playing Classics’ is a 6-minute four-on-the-floor epic, its otherworldly piano motif straddling the uncanny valley where much of WFYE’s sonic world resides. The deceptively straightforward folk-rock of ‘Blood On The Dollar’ finds Brown’s vocals at their most unmediated and emotive, while Amos’ guitar solo delivers the albums’ soulful country rock zenith.

Throughout It’s A Beautiful Place is a clear sense of a band who have honed their curveballs into home runs. Looming and melancholy, wide-eyed and petrified, it’s Blade Runner with a touch of WALL-E, it’s Kubrick and Asimov with a hint of Jay and Silent Bob. These are songs that look outward, conscious of our smallness and questioning our place in the universe while admiring the surrounding beauty.

“A song can feel like everything, communicating vast emotional landscapes,” says Amos, “but your favourite album is less important than any person. That person is less interesting than any dinosaur. That dinosaur is less important than any mountain. That mountain is boring compared to any planet. That planet is only a part of a solar system. That solar system is microscopic next to any galaxy. If music and all other human practices are meaningless on a cosmic scale why does it still feel so important?”