With Fragments///1.24, shoegaze newcomers Carry Me have released something that feels less like a polished product and more like an invitation — a raw and emotional handshake from a band at the edge of discovering its sound. Consisting of five live demos recorded during the earliest stages of the group’s formation, this debut EP is both rough-edged and revealing. It captures what so many early projects fail to preserve: the electricity of potential and the urgency of honest expression.
Carry Me isn’t trying to mask imperfections or smooth things over here. Instead, the band leans fully into the unrefined, live quality of these tracks, which brings a tangible sense of presence and vulnerability to the music. These aren’t final statements; they’re fragments — as the title suggests — but they’re charged with intention. Each song exists like a signal flare from a band that’s clearly meant for bigger stages.
The shoegaze influences are unmistakable: swirling guitars, dreamy reverb-soaked textures, and a rhythm section that balances weight and fluidity. But there’s also a certain post-punk grit and emotional directness to Carry Me’s approach that sets them apart. Their sound is immersive, yes, but it’s also restless — more than just a dreamy haze, there’s a constant push toward catharsis.
Listening to Fragments///1.24 feels like sitting in on a band rehearsal where everything is just beginning to click. The vocals are distant but desperate, the guitars wash over you like waves, and the structures feel like they’re testing their limits — stretching, growing, finding shape. There’s a beautiful tension in that process. The songs aren’t perfect — they’re not supposed to be — but they hit with emotion that’s real and unfiltered.
One of the most impressive things about this EP is how it captures the live energy that the band clearly values. According to Carry Me, their music is designed to live onstage, to breathe and evolve in front of an audience. And you can hear that in these tracks — not just in the way they’re recorded, but in how they move. These are songs built for a room full of people, for the collective experience of sound washing over you in real time. There’s an intimacy to that, and a power, even in demo form.
While it’s difficult to single out individual tracks in such a cohesive project, each song on Fragments///1.24 contributes to the larger mood: a sense of emergence, of vulnerability as a strength, of creating something meaningful from the broken or half-formed pieces of thought and sound. It’s a mood that lingers after the last note fades.
This EP isn’t meant to be a final product — and that’s exactly what makes it so compelling. It’s a sketchbook, not a painting. But in those messy, noisy, beautiful sketches, Carry Me gives listeners something more valuable than polish: promise. You can hear a band carving out its identity, unafraid to let people watch the process in real time.
If you’re a fan of shoegaze, dream-pop, or emotionally driven indie rock — and if you appreciate the kind of music that’s built to bloom onstage — Fragments///1.24 is well worth your time. It’s not just an EP; it’s a beginning. And it suggests that Carry Me is a band you’ll want to catch live before long — when the fragments become something even more powerful.
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