Shape of Water Album Amor Fati Still Rewards A Full Listen Four Years On
How Two Italians in Manchester Built an Art Rock Record Around Loving Fate
Amor fati is Latin for love of fate. Picking it as an album title tells you the record intends to argue something. Shape Of Water released it on 28 October 2022 through Eclipse Records, and it has stayed on our shelf because the argument holds across the full runtime. This is an album built to be played whole.
You can listen to our full playlist which contains the artist’s music, and know more about the artist’s work by scrolling down the page.
What Shape Of Water Do With Art Rock Across Amor Fati
Shape Of Water work as a duo. Rox Capriotti handles keyboards and vocals. Luca De Falco handles guitars. Between them they cover far more ground than that split suggests. Both grew up in Italy and have been based in Manchester for a decade.
Art rock is the label that fits best, mostly because the songs are structured rather than assembled. Sections arrive because the piece needs them. No template dictates where a chorus belongs. Alt rock pop supplies the melodic instinct that keeps it listenable. Alternative rock supplies the weight when a passage needs to land hard.
The pairing of keyboards and guitar as co-lead instruments is the other defining choice. Plenty of rock records treat keys as decoration. Here they carry melody and counter-melody in their own right. That is why the arrangements sound denser than a two-piece normally manages.
Why Reviewers Reached For Muse And Queen On This Album
Two names came up repeatedly when amor fati landed, and both are earned rather than lazy.
Muse is the closest structural comparison. That band built a career on classically-minded keyboard writing underneath rock songs at full volume. This duo work the same seam without copying the delivery. Queen is the other, and it is more specific than it sounds. The album contains a deliberate nod toward Bohemian Rhapsody, which reviewers picked up at the time.
Apocalypse Later Music Reviews scored the album 8 out of 10 and called the duo fundamentally an alternative rock band, with Muse the obvious comparison. That same review also reached for Philip Glass, the Cardigans and Rage Against the Machine. Together they give a fair sense of how far the record ranges without losing its centre.
Who Amor Fati Is For Inside An Alternative Rock Listening Session
The listener this suits treats an album as a single object. They will give a record forty minutes. They notice when a motif returns three tracks later, and they are not hunting for a playlist single.
A theme of isolation runs underneath the album, and the sequencing supports it rather than undercutting it. Three tracks were given music videos: The Snoot, Don’t Leave Me in the Dark and Starchild. Those are a reasonable entry route before committing to the whole thing.
For programming purposes it sits comfortably beside heavier art rock and beside more melodic alternative material, which is unusual. Most records that range this widely end up hard to place. This one does not. The production keeps a consistent voice across the shifts. The band’s own description is blunt and accurate: an alternative art rock band from Manchester.
Stream Amor Fati And Follow Shape Of Water Across Every Platform
Catalogue albums from bands at this scale disappear quickly. A record gets its review cycle, then the algorithm moves to whatever came out on Friday. amor fati survives that, mainly because nothing on it chased a 2022 production trend. The keyboard writing, the guitar tone and the vocal arrangements would all sit the same way today.
IndieRock.News curator team: “amor fati earns a slot with us because it treats the album format seriously. Motifs return, the sequencing means something, and the duo trust the listener to stay with them past track three. That confidence is what makes it worth revisiting rather than merely worth remembering.”
The band have since released Petrichor, so the catalogue is still moving. Hear that on Apple Music or Spotify, and find the wider discography on Deezer or on their full Apple Music page.
For tour and release news the duo post on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X. Videos go up on their YouTube channel, and everything else lives on the official site. Alternative and art rock listeners should start there.
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