"The Hours: Morning" by Cautious Clay | Album Review

The passage of time has never felt so smooth as with the R&B singer’s latest release

The day’s early hours for Joshua Karpeh are filled with wistfulness, curiosity, levity, optimism, and lucidity — not to mention a prism of musical color.

Cautious Clay’s third and latest album, The Hours: Morning, is a unique concept album that chronicles a day in the life of Karpeh from 5 a.m. until 12 p.m. in eight tracks, one for each hour.

This album adds to Clay’s repertoire in a deeply personal way, exploring and exposing snapshots of the person behind the stage name, all packaged in an array of dreamy R&B and blissful funk-pop to match the warm tones of a sunrise.

His sound is highly polished, with each song ready to be plucked and dropped into playlists, able to stand alone to represent him. Still, the album is best understood to be listened to in order, all the way through, to get the best sense of his intentions.

Clay’s morning actually starts on the tail end of a late night, with “Tokyo Lift” at 5 a.m. It’s a silky funk track that embraces the feeling of invincibility that comes with a night out before confronting the realities of the morning ahead. He straddles an energizing yet carefree sound that fits the drifting energy of a larger-than-life night dwindling to an end. Jazzy flute, bass, and piano are draped in a haze like a morning dew to give this song exactly what it needs to set the tone for the album: forcing the listener to be fully absorbed in the moment. “No better time than the present mind,” he reminds us.

Six a.m.’s “No Champagne” shifts the vibe immediately, indicating that this morning is in for a true ebb and flow of feelings from one hour to the next (as most often are). If “Tokyo Lift” was the beginning of the descent, “No Champagne”is the resolution. It has a more subdued, 6/8 swing overlaid with sugar-coated melodies that Clay said he wrote to drown out the noise around him and focus on the “difference between expectation and reality.” This is the hour that he settles down for the morning, steeping in that reality.

“No Traffic” comes next at 7 a.m. to pick it right back up, carrying the weight of overstimulation in waking up and being bombarded with your own thoughts. “Every morning felt like traffic, brain full of static, words automatic,” Clay opens with staccato rhythms that emulate the pulsing feeling of a progressively arousing consciousness and preparing to face the day. A driving rock-esque background drives forward Clay’s ruminations on unsteady relationships, closing on a liquid saxophone solo that floats unconfined right into 8 a.m.’s “The Plot.”

Eight in the morning brings clarity and motivation as if Clay is ready to dive headfirst into the rest of his day by now. Strong drums and slap bass allow for an indie pop feel that lifts Clay’s raspy chorus and passionate falsetto bridge, two singing styles that he has perfected the art of sliding between. “The Plot” hones in on what is important to focus on when confrontations inevitably come, with Clay repeatedly asking, “So you who thinking of, when the plot get tough?”

“Promises” bubbles up with a bit of angst at 9 a.m., slipping in and out of a spunky acoustic guitar riff and a rolling synth bliss that pushes Clay’s vocal range even further up the scale. He wavers in the mixed messages he sang about in previous songs, “I can tell that you don’t make promises, But I can’t let you go.” By mid-morning now, he’s doubling back on the pre-dawn clarity he had, learning as he goes that things become more nuanced with time.

Clay’s “Father Time” adds a deeply personal climax to the album, with the warmth coursing through this track signifying the light accompanying the morning’s 10 a.m. sun and the singer’s assured soulful delivery. It’s a ballad that studies the album’s entire subtext: live in the moment despite the pressures of time marching on around you. “Father Time is gone, but I feel home again,” Clay vows, not letting a timeline dictate what he should feel. Piercing, twangy guitar, and cascading drums accompanied by Clay’s freewheeling vocals give this track the feeling of driving down an open road with the windows down, taking in the air around you.

Before long, “Amber” oozes into the late morning with reverb and funk, creating a steady halo of the deep resin shade over Clay’s voice. “There’s amber in the air, denim jackets flared out,” Clay paints a carefree, nostalgic scene out of a movie, two people sitting next to each other, perhaps on top of the hood of the car that brought “Father Time” to life, now stopped at a vantage point, reflecting. “Whistles blowing hair out, whilе you sitting right next to me,” his passenger is nonchalant, playing hard to get. But Clay is reassured by seeing something in their face that they wouldn’t be there at all if they didn’t want to be.

The morning’s end comes ushered in with “Smoke Break,” a short midday track that sounds more focused as if the morning’s rings of fog are dissipating. An afternoon hypnosis then quickly settles in during this song in Clay’s repetitive lyrics that play with time, musing on the span of a breath, a half-hour smoke break, and of a lifetime, asking for more time with the person he’s spent the morning singing about.

The Hours: Morning is a whirlwind of a day packed into only twenty minutes of music. Cautious Clay’s raw lyricism shines through in these dawn ruminations, guided by familiar but satisfyingly unexplored arrangements. His versatile instrumentation and vocals, vibrant and full of expression, lend well to fulfilling the concept album’s goal of making listeners focus on the exact moment they’re in. Altogether, Clay paints with a vibrant palette of pre-dawn and sunrise shades to articulate a morning well worth waking up for.

Overall rating: 7.5/10

Favorite tracks: Tokyo Lift (5am), No Champagne (6am), Promises (9am)