Cautious Clay Offers Up Connection and Healing

Music and food might seem at first to have little in common—but we still describe both as tasteful, nourishing, and, sometimes, healing. For Joshua Karpeh, who performs as Cautious Clay, music is not unlike the meals he prepares for himself. "It's like cooking, that's the easiest comparison," he muses. "I've learned that making songs is similar to cooking in the sense that sometimes you only need five ingredients, but how well you treat those ingredients or how well you perform those ingredients is the crucial part of it."

The songs on his recently released début album Deadpan Love rarely surpass the three-minute mark and find Karpeh putting his voice forward as the star ingredient in a pop swirl of instrumentation that blends in indie touches with sprinkles of R&B. This focus marks a major change for an artist who never considered himself a singer before and who grew up in Cleveland better known among friends for his ability to make a beat or play the sax. Since quitting his day job in real estate in 2017, Karpeh has built a breakout star persona around his singing, starting with his début single "Cold War." Still, he doesn't shy away from making his other skills known: "I have a lot of melodic sensibilities, but I don't want people to just think I'm a voice, you know what I mean?"

His dual talents are probably best heard on the track "Artificial Irrelevance," in which he duets with a sweet-sounding saxophone, which he also played himself. "It's sort of a self-affirming song," Karpeh explains, one that gets at the very real, lasting ways people validate themselves, whether in the context of a relationship or not. He works through the ups and downs, opening with answers to unposed questions: "Yes, I want the sun, but I only want to rise on occasion/Yes, I'm feeling numb, knowing that the feelings are created."

It makes sense, then, that Deadpan Love was written and recorded in Massachusetts, to which Karpeh escaped with his partner at the height of the pandemic. Away from his bustling, multi-roommate, multi-story brownstone in Brooklyn's Crown Heights, he ruminated on the people in his life. "Relationships are the most important thing that we do have," he says, "and relationships really do give us power."

If the star ingredient of Karpeh's music is his voice, the connections he sings about add the salt, fat, acid, and heat. The songs on Deadpan Love explore relationships of all kinds, turning them over and over with different lyrical approaches, from satirical to earnest. On the song "Box of Bones," for example, he chants, "Don't look at me/I'm in my head/I don't wanna talk," as a melodic percussion builds behind and around his voice. The sound is like a heavy feeling in the diaphragm, building until it breaks out in a moment of liberation. At the two-minute mark, whispers and ad libs enter—not unlike the muffled confessions early in a relationship. Then there is a satisfying release of sound, something Karpeh does often and does well, with a vulnerable-yet-vague declaration in the exhale: "There’s something about us."

The lead single "Agreeable," co-written and -produced with Sia collaborator Jesse Shatkin, wittily tackles the inanity of online interactions of a larger scale. But instead of adding to the political conflagration, he mirrors its absurdity with lyrical acuity: "Doing anything and everything possible/If you start a fire, stop, drop, and roll." On other issues, however, like gun violence, Karpeh speaks with certainty and clarity. Confronting a topic with rougher edges marks a new evolution in his music, but he remains consistent in his open-hearted approach, even with a systemic issue that has left many desensitized. On "Bump Stock," he sings, "I don't wanna love/I don't wanna hate/I don't wanna feel anymore." Despite the subject matter and the lyrics, there's a richness to the composition of balmy baselines and soothing background voices that bestows some much-needed hope.

Over the past few years, Cautious Clay has become a familiar name on the soundtracks to shows like Insecure and 13 Reasons Why and films like Booksmart, backing key scenes with lyrics that convey what the character isn't able to say. Now, Karpeh can be seen on the screen himself, reprising his role as the leader of the Geechee Band in the second season of Godfather of Harlem, starring Forest Whitaker, while also writing original music for the series. "It's honestly very surreal because I didn't make music to get commercial," he says. "I always tend to be pretty left in terms of my overall sonic palette so in the context of hearing it on TV and movies, it's pretty cool."

Despite the pop melodies and catchy lyrics that lend themselves well to strong female leads and block parties, Karpeh says his music is not best enjoyed idly. "I think if they like listening actively, it's great, just engaging with it actively as opposed to, 'Oh, I'm just at a dinner party,'" he says of his listeners. "I mean, if you want to do that, that's fine. I just don't write filler lyrics—I spend a lot of time with my lyrics."

Perhaps unexpectedly for an album conceived during one of the most challenging years of our collective consciousness, there is a broad sense of joy on Deadpan Love that permeates each song. It almost begs the listener to choose levity in our lives as we wait to reenter society. Until then, Karpeh offers us another kind of pandemic jam: one that is focused on unabashed joy as a form of healing.

Deadpan Love is out now. Read this story and many more in print by ordering our inaugural issue here.