Rinehearts
Can’t Do Nothing
Cheersquad Records & Tapes
Hailing from a local neighbourhood, Perth alt-indie band Rinehearts released their debut album Can’t Do Nothing last weekend, and it’s absolutely splendid. With an incredibly relatable headlining, title track, it embraces that feeling of helplessness that seeps in as we all get a little older and try facing our ‘so-called’ adult problems. The album has a soft relentless atmosphere to it, particularly with tracks like What You Can’t See.
It’s no surprise that this new album is a compelling composition since the band contains current and former members from Snowman, Leaches and Screwtop Detonators among others, all legendary Perth bands. The album feels like an unravelling of guitars, compassion and impressions, bringing that intimacy out within their music helps the release feel distinguished from other Perth pop-rock.
Can’t Do Nothing is a nice progression from the band’s previous EP which was released in 2016 by No Front Teeth Records. The album awakens comparisons to the self-titled debut Foo Fighters album; it’s scruffy, loveable and holds together very well. The album is a healthy addition to Perth’s taste for indie pop/ rock. A lot of the tracks cover different types of love: be it heartbreaking, juvenile or confusing. Can’t Seem to Help Myself is a perfect example of a song that explores this theme; with lines such as “but I’m not myself when I look in your eyes”, you’re definitely transported to images of juvenile romances in the school courtyard.
The album’s penultimate track has a more consequential atmosphere, a steady kind of droll, with shadowy vocals that hover over the track and create a tour de force within the song. Every Minute, Every Hour is the longest song, but the winding guitar and driving drums eat up the time, along with some of the more thought-provoking lyrics on the album: “every minute, every hour you’re wasting time when useless things are made on the production line”. This is a pretty clever song, as it seems to wind in all the useless things that come about within our capitalistic industrialist society, things that within a city are most evident, and kind of overwhelms you much in the way a city will overwhelm you on a bad day when you can’t get the idea that there’s no point to any of this out of your head.
Ultimately, Rinehearts have done a good job of creating a soundtrack to growing up in Perth City and I can’t seem to help myself from listening to it.
EMMA PEET
