waterpistol: The Good Life

Lyric sheets to albums, usually, are utilitarian – you turn to them to make sure what you’re hearing is right. The lyric sheet to waterpistol‘s The Good Life, however, reads like a set of poems on its own. As we listen, we feel compelled to read through the duo’s hazy lyricism multiple times to make better sense of it, and to probe for something that we may have missed on the first listen.

Though their words may often appear arbitrary, they strangely communicate the underlying emotion in a way that we can relate. Take the opener Who But You For My Broken Heart, for example – where Naomi Zeilemaker sings about hearing a “Londoner’s sweet song” and then being abandoned by him. Though we may never get quite what she means by “the seventh element” or the “women” who “sat with nothing on”, we feel a sense of loss and desertion as we hear her.

When such lyricism is paired with warm, ambient instrumentation, such as on The Blue, The Green And The Violet or Through Your Window, waterpisol truly succeed in lifting us off into their surreal universe.