Watercolored navigates emotional depths on concept album 'Tears of the Sea'

Sometimes music doesn’t just tell a story, it submerges you in one. That’s precisely what Itai Bauman, under the alias Watercolored, accomplishes with 'Tears of the Sea', a record that doesn’t unfold so much as it undulates. The album is a journal of internal tides, unspooling in waves of melancholy, wonder, and quiet revelation.

The record opens with the hush of isolation, a drifting monologue that sets the tone: “You are in a small boat in the middle of the ocean. You are alone.” Each track from here moves with the fluid unpredictability of water, exploring the blurred boundaries between outer journey and inner reckoning.

Bauman crafts his own lexicon, steeped in ambient textures, cinematic arrangements, and gently unspooling melodies. Tracks like 'The Chase' pulse with personal stakes, while 'Waterflowers' offers a kind of glowing, shoegazey optimism that feels like sunlight breaking through surface tension.

Bauman’s background, shaped across music institutions in Israel, Berlin, and the UK, clearly informs the precision and patience of this project. But there’s no academic rigidity here. Instead, 'Tears of the Sea' breathes with the looseness of lived experience, with moods shifting like currents and lyrics anchoring each scene in place.

Rather than overwhelming you with spectacle, 'Tears of the Sea' invites you to float. It rewards stillness. It’s the kind of album that understands silence is just as important as sound, and that sometimes, the most profound movements happen below the surface.