Father Time (10am) by Cautious Clay | Single Review

R&B’s gentle poet cracks a window into his new album, one hour at a time

Self-described “prose put to life in Brooklyn,” Cautious Clay has penned an epigraph to rival them all.

Singer and songwriter Joseph Karpeh has released three new tracks to tease his new eight-song album, out May 16. Packaged in a deep sunset orange and labeled “Father Time,” each track offers a new snapshot of his life — and the timestamps to go with it.

“Every hour of the day has a distinct feeling to me,” the “Cold War” singer says. In the eight-song project labeled The Hours: Morning, he sets out to emulate the intense, calm warmth that starts the day as it evolves every hour, whether the peaceful early morning or kinetic daybreak. Karpeh’s full album will feature eight discrete clockwork moments in the singer’s life.

The now-trio of songs he’s released, clocking in at seven minutes, reveals selective slivers of the singer’s dawn musings. Each has a distinct feel, giving the impression that just one morning with Cautious Clay is rife with rumination.

“Tokyo Lift (5am),” up first on The Hours, starts Karpeh’s morning ambitiously early (or potentially caps a particularly late night, however you look at it), chronicling an escapade to Little Tokyo filled with impromptu karaoke and meandering to the shore.

The track oozes funk, with electric guitar pumping and plucking bass strings, light record scratches, and a rich drumbeat throughout. A jazz flute solo clinches the bluesy groove feel.

“I need a little while to feel like living,” he confesses in the song’s opener. The song is studded with references to time throughout, reinforcing the album’s motif. “We at the best part of wasting time,” he reinforces in the chorus, “No better time than the present mind.” “Tokyo Lift” is about living and basking in the moment without the stress that society often places on forward-looking.

In the post-chorus, he asks, “Ooh, babe, where’d the time go?” He doesn’t ask in a remorseful way; rather, the thirty-two-year-old singer contemplates with the same twinge of sage fondness of an eighty-year-old looking back on a full life.

It is precisely the kind of song you would want to hear if you were awake at 5 in the morning: laid-back jazz bee-bop. There are also whirls of a vaguely nostalgic sound, as if borrowing from the seventies, adding to the ways that Karpeh plays with the concept of time.

His next hour, “No Champagne (6am),” harbors mellifluous soul, the most quintessentially Cautious-sounding of them all. It’s a beautiful meditation on the constant, silent ardency of love fueling Karpeh through the best and worst of life. “I get a feeling I can’t shake, It was keeping me awake, ’Til six in the morning,” he sings, quiet yet never more alive in the predawn haze. His voice in this track is the definition of crooning.

“With ‘No Champagne,’ I was really trying to set an image around defining the difference between expectation versus reality,” Karpeh says of the track’s intention. “Being in a space with someone that you care about…When we’re at our worst, how are we translating with that person in a room?”

“When there’s no real reason to celebrate — how are you actually connecting to me?” he continues. “How are we actually connecting to each other?”

“There’s no champagne, There’s no real reason to celebrate, I just want you close,” he realizes in the song, feeling the gravitational pull of this person through the world’s noise. Intimate lyrics overlay his floaty indie-meets-pop-meets-R&B. His voice straddles wistful, anguished, and fervent in this track to bring home the feeling of what steady love can do to a person’s emotions.

Last, “Father Time (10am)” rounds out the previewed window into Cautious’s morning. It’s a warmer track, as if the sun is firmly up now, compared to the cool jazz of “Tokyo Lift” and ethereal beats of “No Champagne” in the early hours of 5 and 6 am. It’s indie with a dose of rock ballad and a jolt of desert pop.

Slightly twangy guitars pulse through this mid-morning track to bring an invigorating morning carpe diem as Karpeh sings. “Like water to the beach, We’re right where we’re supposed to be on paper,” Cautious Clay is throwing his namesake to the wind:

“Father Time is gone,” he belts out, “but I feel home again.” In a few introspective words, Karpeh takes the archetypal figure of growing older and gives his listeners permission to let go of the weight that comes with it.

“I wrote this song about acknowledging how important it is to act and live presently,” Karpeh says. “So saying ‘Father time is gone’ is like saying all the things one thinks [are] a part of getting older cannot and should not apply to the life we want to lead or the life that makes us feel most at home.”

“Even when you hold me back,” he sings, “Even when I’m in pieces, I’m all in.” Cautious Clay is unafraid to get older and refuses to believe it should slow him down from experiencing the moment he’s in.

If there’s any takeaway that Cautious is signaling in these three songs, they certainly preview how Cautious’s undeniably suave vocals will give rise to this lyrical, enigmatic storytelling. He has mastered the soul-piercing falsetto, his signature soft, breathy singing, his emphatic runs, and his ability to seamlessly maneuver between them all. For an artist who has been busy with collaborations in recent years, these three tracks allow him to shine as a solo artist. These are all well-polished, high-production songs, but his voice and message are beautifully raw.

If these three tracks are any indication, the rest of Cautious Clay’s morning hours will be on repeat for the whole day.

The Hours: Morning full tracklist, out May 16:

1. Tokyo Lift (5am)

2. No Champagne (6am)

3. Traffic (7am)

4. The Plot (8am)

5. Promises (9am)

6. Father Time (10am)

7. Amber (11am)

8. Smoke Break (12pm)