Every Hour, Its Own Feeling: Cautious Clay’s ‘The Hours: Morning’ Captures Time Through Atmosphere
Like the start of every day, Cautious Clay’s next release, The Hours: Morning out now via Concord, signifies a start. Aptly titled, this album serves as the first installment of a three-part series that will culminate in a cohesive project called The Hours.
It’s a brand new day for Cautious Clay, and he’s taking it head-on with The Hours: Morning, a conceptual endeavor that’s equal parts mixtape and emotive timetable. After moving to Philadelphia following the release of his last album — the jazzy and autobiographical KARPEH — time spent in Brooklyn, the city where Cautious Clay bloomed into the artist he is today, became much more precious, and ritual became a necessity. Pushing the limits of a freeform existence that once felt natural, Cautious began to build a schedule that prioritized time outside of the studio in which he’s spent most of the past decade. The new confines provided the infrastructure for focused creativity, and soon enough, he had netted over 60 songs over a year.
Of this batch, the eight that appear on The Hours: Morning were selected on the basis of which Cautious associates with each waking hour. This album interprets daybreak as something more conversational than intensely personal. Armed with a certain pop precision that he’s honed over the past decade, it’s a project that further illuminates Cautious as an artist whose strength lies in his dexterity.
Touching on the album, he shares, “Every hour of the day has a distinct feeling to me. With this eight-song project, I wanted to reflect on what the morning feels like to me, so I made what felt like 8 discrete hours of the day. Some of the hours feel calm, and some of the hours have more energy, but I wanted them to play off of each other based on different experiences I’ve had during those times of day. The particular color of amber used for the album artwork also felt like it encapsulates both the calm early morning and the energy/warmth of the rising sun.”
