Water From Your Eyes are a fairly unclassifiable (100 Gecs meets post-punk maybe?) duo who released their debut album on Matador last year. Their sound is nothing but left turns, so it figures that their new cover is a wildly unexpected choice too too. They covered Chumbawamba…but not the one Chumbawamba song everyone covers. Instead, they covered a different song from Tubthumper. Not even one of the failed “Tubthumping” follow-up singles either. They went even deeper, to one of the album’s many unknown gems (it was my first CD so maybe I’m biased, but it’s a good album!): “The Good Ship Lifestyle.”
“These are covers that we made at the same time as we were finishing [debut album] Everyone’s Crushed,” the band wrote. “Nate chose ‘Good Ship Lifestyle’ and Rachel chose the other three. Chumbawamba is an obvious favorite of ours, but it is between Adele in the style of The Cure and Al Green as the most left field covers we could have chosen. We think it’s funny and good, but ultimately that will be left to the listeners to decide for themselves.”
It is funny and good, and you can decide for yourself:
PS. They covered Ween earlier this year too.