Micro: Eat Your Heart Out's "Can't Stay Forever" (Fearless)


Eat Your Heart Out - Can’t Stay Forever (Fearless)

In 2019, one year prior to having this blog as a personal outlet, I was losing my best friend. I won’t air their story as it’s not mine to tell but basically; we lived three thousand miles away and they were getting incredibly distant. Around that time Florescence, the debut record from Newcastle, Australia’s alternative rock outfit Eat Your Heart Out was released. I had followed this band through their early days, first hearing them on a Punk Goes compilation so this record was one I vastly anticipated. Not only did I find the lyrical content so relatable that it got me through the crisis of losing touch with the person most important to me, I found the songs themselves so strong that it was my first truly declared album of the year ever.


So now that there’s a follow up and I live in the very area my friend lived in during the last album cycle (still have that physical distance between us though) I was just as eager. After I first listened to this record I turned to my partner, listening with me, and said that while I’m enjoying Can’t Stay Forever I think Eat Your Heart out could ultimately stand to experiment a bit more. After sitting with the record every day on my commute to work I have second thoughts about that claim. The song “Twenty Something” is an attempt at that slowly diminishing Travis Barker born style of pop punk. I think this one goes off near flawless in it’s instrumentation and vocal performances but like a lot of artists in that lane lyrically has basically nothing to say and probably won’t stand the test of time. “Poison Devotion” is a dream pop ballad that I feel tries to recreate the magic of “Nowhere’s” outro from the debut but maybe the band didn’t account for the fact that they couldn’t make that last a whole three minutes.


I think what I really meant by my comment is that the strongest moments here are moments where Eat Your Heart Out does what they do best; deliver alt rock bangers that have a lot to air out personally. “Down,” “Scissors in My Skin” and “Deep End” are among some of the standouts on the record. I like those songs and while I don’t think the shots at something new particularly hit, I have to give credit where credit is due for effort. While I don’t find Can’t Stay Forever to be a particularly top tier record it is still a solid one and I hope I get to see this little band I’ve watched grow continue to do just that.

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