Labour Day feels like one of those “holidays” people tend to forget about. Its meaning—celebrating the rights of workers—feels forgotten by many, left in the shadow of simply getting a day off. This year, however, Fitzroy’s Night Cat, intentionally or (probably) not, hosted a Labour Day celebration in the form of a concert from politically-outspoken, New York-based band Water From Your Eyes. Between songs, singer Rachel Brown (they/them) repurposes guitar interludes from recent album It’s A Beautiful Place as a background for monologuing. Brown muses about the holiday, initially (semi-jokingly) wishing audience members a “Happy Labour Day” before their demeanour shifts into something more serious. The rest of the band (guitarist and all-around production wizard Nate Amos, as well as touring members Al Nardo and Bailey Wallowitz) focus on creating a delicate moment, a break from the intensity of the music. They give a shout-out to anyone who works and has ever worked, before calling for “death to the ruling class.” 

This back-and-forth between light-heartedness and solemn anger served as a running theme for the night, oscillating between serious and silly, free and formal, expressive and deadpan. Brown, semi-hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, dressed in a cross between a suit jacket and a backless dress, embodied this perfectly. One second, they’re dancing around with the rest of the band, waving back and forth in a fashion reminiscent of Stop Making Sense-era David Byrne, the next they stand still in front of the microphone, delivering lyrics as if they’re the world’s most morbid shopping list. It’s an impossibly compelling performance, difficult to describe but leaving a strong impression all the same.

Despite the deadpan delivery of much of the performance, the songwriting manages to shine even brighter live than it does on the band’s studio recordings. Especially on It’s A Beautiful Place, it’s easy to get lost in the layers upon layers of guitars, the sheer beauty and complexity of Nate Amos’ production sometimes pulling focus from the songwriting. In a live setting, however, Brown’s words take centre stage, and the lyrics just click. A song like “Buy My Product”, for example, is easy to dismiss as a cheeky anti-capitalist song, until you hear its energy with the live band, the tongue-in-cheek descriptions of ignoring “happy endings” in favour of “spending” feeling strangely serious over the frantic bass and technical guitar work. 

What was already a fantastic performance was enhanced by its setting. The Night Cat’s stage is an in-the-round format, the band surrounded by the audience on all sides. Whilst it got a little hot and crowded—so much so that the band couldn’t physically get off the stage, forcing them to play their encore directly after the main set ended—any discomfort was alleviated by the sea of faces coming from all angles. Being close to the front of the crowd was an incredible experience, being able to soak up the atmosphere and sense of community that was built around the band. 

This sense of community was most apparent when Brown directly addressed the audience. Over the Amos-led guitar interlude “You Don’t Believe In God?”, Brown spoke to the eager crowd on a shared sense of fear and anger towards the state of the world, towards the atrocities being committed in Iran and Palestine. “The cruel cannot survive,” they defiantly shout to the audience, and for a moment, the room bursts out in cheers, flags that had been brought in were waved, and everyone was connected. The band used this as a lead-in to the song “True Life,” channelling all of their anger into violent guitar riffs, placing venom behind every lyric as Brown violently shuddered, as they talk-sing about “dirt bones, stolen land,” asking to hear something “[they] haven’t been told,”.

The music wasn’t all this furious and explosive, however, still capturing a range of emotions and styles. Water From Your Eyes refuse to be pigeonholed into a single genre, the aggressive, experimental punk stylings of their previous album Everyone’s Crushed meeting their more fun, melodic counterpart in the songs from recent release It’s A Beautiful Place. Much like Brown’s ever-shifting stage presence, the feelings of the crowd would shift from this shared release of anger to an equally powerful desire to dance. 

It’s fitting, then, that their set (shh, encores don’t count, even if the band couldn’t get off the stage) ended on “Playing Classics”, an artsy pop banger that Pitchfork writers allege is inspired by Charli XCX. Driven by an unforgettable guitar riff from Amos and tight playing from the rest of the band, the room was wholly consumed by the song. 

The world may be a scary place, but the band left the crowd with a reminder that Beautiful Place[s] still exist, that dance and connection are just as important, even more so, in uncertain times.