On “Gone,” Carrying Torches step into the fire and emerge, somehow, sharpened, focused, and strikingly human. The new single confronts loss and survival with naked honesty, striking a balance between openness and an overriding refusal to be consumed by the past. It’s a song that doesn’t merely look back, it shoves itself forward.
Riding, driving guitars and twitchy momentum, “Gone” can’t seem urgent enough from the get-go, as if racing with emotional gravity. Its instrumental backbone lunges and pulses with grit and tension, anchoring the vocal performance, which seems confessional yet resolute. There’s a sense that these words were hard-won, delivered not for dramatic effect but because they came from something that had to be said. Trying their hand at a wide range of sounds, Carrying Torches has worked for over 10 years to continue developing as artists, playing nearly 200 shows spanning the Midwest and establishing themselves as dark songwriters with high-energy stage presence. That experience shows here. “Gone” is lived-in and purposeful, and the band, at a moment of clarity, holds onto the past while not giving in to its weight or vanishing.
The band’s Electric Heartland Garage Rock is rooted in the intersection of grit, melody, and introspection, and “Gone” is a shining example of that synthesis. It’s personal without being insular, relatable yet specific. Listeners are asked into a reckoning that feels both personal and universal.
“Gone” is a mission statement of presence. It faces pain, names it, and then keeps moving. Carrying Torches is high proof of what the Cold U.K. & Australian underground had to offer, a reminder that openness and defiance can coexist, and that survival often makes this noise.