(Cover art by Dillon Bauman) Careful Gaze has had a busy year and they're ending it with a bang. Despite the crushing uncertainty that comes attached to every day since the middle of March, the Minneapolis post-hardcore trio has found unique ways to create and release new music — three standalone singles, a fourth song tied in to a novella that will see yearly updates, a Christmas cover, and now a six-song EP to give 2020 the send-off that it deserves. As long as the pandemic rages on (which seems to be at least for the next 8-10 months), bands seem to be drawn towards what might be described as "stopgap" releases — shorter batches of songs that they can put together remotely and use as a way to retain the momentum they built pre-COVID with touring and recording. Careful Gaze is defying those assumptions with LOUD HOWLS THE ETERNAL WOLF!   "We knew we wanted to end the year out with something that felt larger, more cinematic, and more important together," ...

Careful Gaze are continuing their streak of 2020 one-off singles with "Sunrooms." All three tracks have depicted different emotional struggles, from existential lonelines s to fighting domestic abuse . "Sunrooms" finds lyricist/vocalist Gabe Reasoner offering a testament to friendship and community in the wake of a flood of death. He grasps at the past while drowning in the present. Despite the claim that eloquence was left "dangling on a clothesline in the summer wind," each impressionistic line uses its poetry to capture an individual strand of the tangled web of human connection. The band builds to a crescendo gradually. Most of the song's first part focuses on Reasoner's words and affecting vocals. He reaches into his trademark screamed range, but the rest of the band remains subdued. "Sunrooms'" peak arrives as a sea of gang vocals bursts in alongside Reasoner and repeats the chorus over and over. The bond being demanded ("...

One of these days, I'm gonna have to finally listen to Careful Gaze . Today is the day. The Minneapolis quartet is following up their 2019 debut You Too Will Rest  with the standalone single "Goals," continuing their journey of emotions-first music. Careful Gaze's full range is on display, from transfixing alt-rock to chiming melancholy to post-hardcore breakdowns and back around again. Gabe Reasoner, the band's lyricist, paints the walls of the storm's eye with questioning words of misanthropy and hope. The emptiness of nights spent alone is matched with relational determinism. It's unclear whether there is encouragement or anger buried underneath the song's rubble — it is left up to the listener. Regardless of how one interprets Reasoner's lyrics, the potency of the overall emotion is undiminished. Guitars squall, Reasoner howls, drums punish. What more could you want in an anthemic rock song? "Goals" is out now. Buy it below...