Multi-artist Eric Lindley AKA: Careful releases their second single, “I had a secret,” the track arrives ahead of the arrival of their EP, Promise/Practice, available September 22nd, via DSPs.

Careful wrote about the track, “‘I had a secret’ is about the contrast between the burden of secrets to the person keeping them, versus the near-irrelevance they have to nearly everyone else. The singer describes a lifetime (many lifetimes?) of shame, cruelty, self-destruction, and hedonism, all because of or in order to bury some secret, and yet is able to acknowledge that in the end, no one else ever cared.

I wanted the song to feel like a relic recovered long after the singer had gone: the secret doesn’t matter to the listener either, but they can feel how much anguish it must have caused. Cassette tape artifacts, thin bare saxophones, and a warm bed of distortion come together to degrade the otherwise formal songwriting”

Lindley, officially formed in early 2010, in Brooklyn, just before the release of “Oh, Light.” Careful grew out of the cross-stream of art rock and concert music in LA, while Lindley studied with composer James Tenney by day and played bills with bands like Xiu Xiu, Mount Eerie, and Julia Holter by night.

Lindley released “Nightcat!” as Nightcat in 2006, then as Careful, the albums ”Oh, Light” in 2010, “Because I am always talking” in 2012, and “The world doesn’t end” in 2014.

“The world doesn’t end” was a concept album: a set of duets between his own voice and a version of his voice digitally altered to sound like a woman’s. The technique enabled Lindley to explore his own queer & nonbinary identity in the music, as well as the storytelling opportunities opened up by adding this additional voice. Lindley created most of the sounds on all of the albums himself with an assortment of standard pop tools like guitar & piano, as well as more esoteric instruments like folk harp, harmonium, toy piano, and electronics. Live shows featured various collaborators over time, including Qasim Naqvi and Aakaash Israni of Dawn of Midi, Stephanie Richards (St. Vincent, David Byrne), and interdisciplinary artist Miwa Matreyek.

Pre-order Promise/Practice by Careful HERE