Singer, songwriter, and producer Cautious Clay has become mysterious in the modern music pantheon. His list of songwriting/producing credits is brimming with A-listers, and each addition’s solo discography is becoming more impressive and expansive. What started as an earnest career for an R&B hopeful quickly became a colorful exploration of the human experience set to a range of pop balladry and freeing takes on modern jazz. Clay seems only to be getting started. On April 16, the artist releases The Hours: Morning, a quick yet emotionally dense look at Clay’s pop prowess and his ability to craft infectious, poetic pieces of modern music.
These eight songs are a far cry from Clay’s KARPEH LP, his 2023 release that saw the artist dive headfirst into his jazz influences. While his previous release was an experimental take on modern jazz, Clay’s new album is more honed, digestible, and radio-ready. The Hours: Morning takes a palpable journey through Clay’s morning routine, which appears to be filled with vulnerability and purity. Underneath the sugar-coated melodies and bright tones are peeks at Joshua Karpeh, the man behind the artist. Ironically, The Hours: Morning feels more personal than Clay’s self-titled LP from two years ago. While the tracklist stays consistently in the pop pocket, Clay’s maturity as an artist comes out in the lyrics, creating a commercially viable and lyrically risky LP. Still, those risks are buried underneath the danceable pop tendencies of The Hours: Morning.
On the surface, you would think Clay is retreating into pop tropes. The Hours: Morning is filled with uptempo anthems with tight melodies that collide with twinkling acoustics and groovy drum patterns, creating enticing textures for the listener to fall into. While the artist’s vision for this LP is made clear from the start, with the R&B-leaning single “Tokyo Drift” welcoming us to the album, that vision comes off one-dimensional after a few listens. While a moment like “Traffic” features a blaring horn that adds a freewheeling jazz feel to the highlight, and “Promises” brings subtle hints of acoustic bliss, the overarching pop tendencies of the album find Clay leaning on familiar tropes from the genre to help build his vision.
While The Hours: Morning sonically finds the artist playing it safe, Clay’s songwriting has transformed into glimpses into his personal life. The lyrics on this album are some of the artist’s most personal, like on “Father Time,” the nimble love ballad, or “Smoke Break,” the hypnotic calm after the storm. The highs on this album soar as Clay’s doe-eyed love songs give these sinfully sweet tunes the emotional depth to keep The Hours: Morning from feeling like a reach for Clay. Even if the arrangements feel a bit familiar, Clay rises from the syrupy rubble with a fist full of lyrics that bring the listener one step further into the artist’s world. 4
With all its ups and downs, The Hours: Morning is far from a miss for Clay. The acclaimed artist takes a break from his circumnavigation of modern music and instead lands on the mystical island to unearth a new side of his artistry. This side is a colorful, fun prism of color that reflects a rainbow of emotions through honest songwriting set to thudding, rhythmic pop that emphasizes Clay’s unique approach to the consistently burgeoning genre.
