[1] Rapper Alexei "Crescent Moon" Casselle and producer Stephen "Anatomy" Lewis, who had spun off Kill the Vultures as a quartet from their earlier hip-hop group Oddjobs, were by this point the sole remaining members of the band.

At the time, Casselle was learning to play guitar and had formed a blues/folk duo, Roma di Luna, with his then-wife Channy Leanneagh.

Club, Christopher Bahn wrote that the band's sound combined "elements of the raw holler of old-style Delta blues and the jagged clatter of New York's brash punk-jazz scene, with beats that boom like thunder and clank like metal dropped on a factory floor".

Reviewer Chris Riemenschneider praised the album as "new and inventive" and called the duo "hip-hop's answer to Fela Kuti and Sonic Youth.

"[6] French website Fake For Real said that The Careless Flame "bears the mark of great albums," and singled out the song "Moonshine" in particular, calling it "the ultimate blues of the new century, a drunkard's lament, a background of fatalism, of decline, underlined by a simple bass line, slow and intermittent percussion and a tired saxophone.