On This Track #13: The XCERTS – “rinse repeat”
- Raven
- May 20
- 2 min read
Repetition as Memory, Adulthood as Reframing
With “rinse repeat”, The XCERTS revisit their own past not through nostalgia, but through confrontation. Deliberately referencing “crisis in the slow lane” from their 2009 debut "In The Cold Wind We Smile", the track reflects on how grief, helplessness and emotional collapse evolve when experienced through adulthood rather than youth.
Musically, “rinse repeat” balances directness with restraint. Distorted guitars, steady rhythmic momentum and emotionally exposed vocal delivery create a framework that feels urgent without becoming theatrical. The arrangement avoids dramatic excess, instead allowing repetition and gradual accumulation to carry the emotional weight of the song. This structural circularity mirrors the track’s central idea: that certain emotional experiences do not disappear with time, but return in altered forms. At its core, the song engages with helplessness. Murray Macleod’s lyrics move between scenes shaped by illness, relational breakdown and emotional exhaustion, blurring personal and collective forms of grief into a single emotional continuum. The presence of cancer within the narrative becomes especially significant here. Rather than functioning symbolically, it remains concrete and immediate - an intrusion into everyday life that reshapes perspective without offering resolution. That tension extends into the wider context of "i think i want to go home now". Written collaboratively by all three members together in one room for the first time since the band’s earlier records, the album reflects a return not simply to process, but to emotional transparency. Across its material, personal loss and instability are not retrospectively interpreted from distance. They are documented while still unfolding. This creates a broader dialogue between past and present within The XCERTS’ work. By referencing their own earlier material, the band acknowledge continuity rather than reinvention. Emotional vulnerability here is not treated as something youthful left behind, but as a recurring condition shaped differently by age, responsibility and accumulated experience.
Within the context of contemporary alternative rock, “rinse repeat” reflects a broader movement toward self-reflective songwriting that resists polished narratives of growth or recovery. The XCERTS do not frame adulthood as emotional resolution. Instead, the track suggests that maturity often means learning how to remain present inside cycles that never fully disappear.
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