It’s the wonderful month of October, which means I feel contractually obligated to listen to some music that makes me a) hide behind the couch, b) call my mom and ask her to pick me up because I’m scared, and c) sleep with a night light on because the monster in my closet started knocking again. (Oh God. It won’t stop. Someone help me it won’t stop!)
And let me tell you: Data Wretch, the developer of the visualizer behind Careful Gaze’s third full-length album IT DOES NOT SLEEP, really crafted some high-octane memetic kill agent nightmare fuel. It fits the vibe of the Minneapolis post-hardcore group’s tortured sound, dripping with static and rot, black ichor, and symbiotic pain that spiderwebs around your bones and twists them. Some of the tracks blister from beginning to end, while some dig into the marrow for a little bit of tenderness. This music – like the accompanying visuals – is supposed to haunt you.
So that intro to this post wasn’t me being glib. It was me telling you that this music might summon some real demons. The band certainly let theirs out into their new album, with the lyrics touching on fear, dissatisfaction with an unjust society, and feelings of disassociation and derealization. The powerful sonic exploration of these themes might shock you, but if you’ve prepared your soul to accept a reflection of the darkness within it, pop on IT DOES NOT SLEEP.
What is “it”, by the way? What “does not sleep”? It is, in fact, that haunting feeling of not belonging int the world, as expressed in the album’s title track. “‘Cause most days of my life, I don’t want to be anywhere,” sings Gabriel Reasoner. “It hurts inside my body / I’m scared that it won’t leave / It does not sleep.” The feeling doesn’t go away, not in any one of us, even those of us who call ourselves so content with life that nothing can bring us down. No, it simply hibernates, waiting for its time to strike. The song reflects this sudden attack: It begins relatively soft, but towards the end, the full dose of poison from its sting bleeds into your ears, your brain, and your soul.
All of the songs on the album center around this idea of being haunted, whether that haunting comes from an exterior force (destroyed romance, society’s cruelest whims, the natural and horrific passage of time) or within (aforementioned tortured feelings, coping with aging, processing miscommunications and mistakes). But regardless of each song’s topic, Careful Gaze play with as much intensity as these feelings. Reasoner’s sound design on this record, as well as production from drummer Lars Oslund and co-production from guitarist Bailey Sullivan, lets the loud gravitas ring without compression. This also allows the quiet parts to hit harder than the loud ones, when they have their moments.
The lyrics of IT DOES NOT SLEEP hit just as hard as the music, purging personal pain with well-placed metaphors weaved into melodies, punctuated with the occasional cry of anguish. “Percy”, the opening track, kicks the album off with “It hungers / And tonight it feeds”, introducing us with incredible scream-singing to this concept of the invisible monster lending the album its vague namesake. At just under two minutes, the song delivers delicious dissonance, reflected the rent and jagged feelings of its singer, almost like a pleading nighttime prayer: “Void of my chest, keeper of dreams / I love you and need you to put me to sleep / Finish me”.
On their Bandcamp, Careful Gaze calls the album “a collection of love songs”, and they are accurate with that description. However, that is a farce, though I do not complain. These are not just love songs: They are songs about love so strong it destroys people, love that takes hit after hit until it explodes and causes internal damage to vital organs, love that withers over time but feels like a sudden myocardial infarction when it finally dies. Note the following lyrics:
- On “Shallows”: “If they take me down, lay me on the shore where they dashed my high hopes / They say sometimes you’ll have to let the ones you love go / I’ll do it if you need it, but I hope that you don’t.”
- On “Last Blood”: “We worship love, and it’s never enough / You will find someone else, and it won’t be enough / And every time that we fall out of love / We give up a little of the warmth in our blood.”
- On “Replicant II”, which also borrows some lyrics from Rutger Hauer’s final monologue in Blade Runner to sell its themes of derealization and death: “You always spoke my name like it was a message you’d been put here to give me, did you not / We always found our way / But there are some wounds that you can’t fuck away.”
- On “Chiron”: “If I’m pretty at my saddest / Oh, the last year was fucking beautiful / If we fade away like lovers do / And the lakeside bench holds only you / Just know I tried my hardest / I’m so glad you made it through.”
And finally, on “Cerulean”, the most recent single from the album: “No, they cannot take the memories that we have / You know I still carry them like a locket at my chest / Some days that’s all that keeps me here / Some days I cannot do my best anymore.” This is perhaps the song that best synthesizes all of the album’s themes into one: Loss of youth, sputtering romance, and a need to cling on to the things that made life worth living that are slipping away.
It is almost impossible to really unpack all of the emotions on this album; it demands repeated listens, although these tracks weigh heavy on the soul. So even if putting the record on makes you put your hands over your eyes, you’ve at least got to peek through your fingers at the things Careful Gaze’s lyrics makes you confront. You cannot ignore the incredible musical and lyrical work, layered with such emotion that you yourself immediately connect with the message the band is sending.
What is that message? Did you forget what we discussed, about the subject of the album’s title IT DOES NOT SLEEP? I direct you to Careful Gaze’s 2025 EP one day this will let you go, a three-track ambient record with song titles that form a poem: “you are the strongest that i know / nothing lost, nothing owned / one day this will let you go”. That forms the message of the band’s new album: Despite whatever it is that haunts you, one day you will be free from it. You don’t know when that day will come. You may want it to come soon. But everyone is just like you, suffering in the same beautiful and terrible way, because the things haunting you are so much bigger than you can conceive. It does not sleep. In fact, it works overtime.
I do believe this is one of the best post-hardcore albums I’ve heard from an indie group in quite some time. Please take a listen to IT DOES NOT SLEEP via the visualizer below. (NOTE: Fast-moving and flickering images may cause discomfort to some viewers.)
Also, Careful Gaze are going on tour through November across the U.S., at least in the Midwest and the South. Tour dates are on their Instagram via the little button below.
Written by Will Sisskind
