The packaging of the new Bodies of Water album, with its pictures of clouds, sunny mountains, and heavenly galaxies proves to be a visual summary of what you will hear in the band’s music. Their songs evoke a feeling of being lifted up beyond your mortal cares and worries by the band’s lush, beautiful harmonies, tight structures and kaleidoscopic musical arrangements that sound at once broad and deeply personal. While many indie rock acts turn gospel against itself by incorporating the genre’s instruments and conventions into songs about spiritual and moral collapse, Bodies of Water isn’t shy about putting their love for gospel’s lyrical elements on display. But while the references to a higher spiritual authority are undeniably present in lyrics like “Then he spoke and the locusts came/He breathed and the face of the earth was renewed,” these come more from an admiration for the genre than from an attempt to proselytize. Their songs are just as driven by punk and pyschedelic rock, and these elements combine into songs that explode off of each other and are punctuated by the exquisite harmonies of BoW’s four core members. Take all this, add to it some jittery musical push-and-pull, and wrap it all in a blanket of roof beam-raising theatricality that recalls the Arcade Fire, and you have a band worth watching out for.
--John Frusciante
