There have been plenty of strong debut albums that came out this year, but one of the best that went largely under the radar for no good reason is the debut from Chicago artist Pete Cautious.
The self-titled album is blooming with wavy synths, sunny electric guitar riffs and an overall sense of levity throughout, even though the lyrics themselves do not feel as important to Cautious as much as the instrumentations do.
“Most of the album was recorded as a stream of consciousness,” Cautious says.
“There was a bare-bones structure,” he adds, “usually a synth and simple drum track, and the rest I would just roll the tape and see what happened.”
“There’s something a little terrifying about it truthfully, like a tight rope walk without a net.” Because he records solo and totally DIY, “it’s a pretty honest environment,” he says, “I’m never sure what I’ll stumble upon.”
In fact, he cites the dreamy, watery track from the album, “Dreamin’ On a Sunday,” as of the songs that best reflect his ‘off-the-cuff’ style. The entire song was recorded in a day with his wife, Stephanie Koenig, adding the backup vocals later.
“I wrote the lyrics the night before, showed up in the morning, got my head straightened out and went for it. I think of it as Pavement-meets-David-Bowie.”
“Slow Down” was another such track – conceived and recorded quickly. While it’s an instrumental, it really has a cool summer jam vibe to it – “chill and sultry like a little Mac DeMarco, a little Phil Collins,” Cautious says. We dig it a lot and the comparison is not that far off in some ways.
The melodies and interesting vocals of Cautious come through with some distortion on the sunning synths and guitar-driven chords of “You and I”.
Cautious explains that the song “was the most thought out [song on the album] beforehand, and took the most time for better or worse.” He says it is also the most “complicated” song arrangement-wise on the album.
“The chords are really weird, but when you listen to it, it flows pretty easily,” he says.
It has the signature Cautious guitar sound on the opening riff like a bizarro acid-warped Stevie Ray Vaughn. A booming chorus, delays with plenty of definition. His solo vocals are intimate and unconventional at the same time.
The lyrics are also compelling: “A touch of hair/let my hands disappear/beneath your waves beneath your waves tonight/I love this view/oh I love the view/a canopy on top of me and you.” These are indeed some of the deepest and most sophisticated lyrics on the album.
Cautious’ lyrical content is largely fundamental, about love and attraction, perhaps about one girl throughout the recording.
“The Only Girl” is a bright, lumbering guitar track with Cautious’ lazy vocals – a song ripe for a hot summer day by the pool.
And the warm rays of “I’m Your Man,” features treble-heavily guitar notes and drum machine beats together with Cautious’ crooner-like vocals and keyboard taints. “She is Mine” has an especially sentimental feel thanks to high octane infusions of synths and electric guitar.
The track, “Go on Shine,” is a song that differs a bit from other tracks thanks to its New York jazzy saxophone vibe and Cautious’, particularly melancholic vocals.
The album closes with the drowsy. almost bed-time lullaby of “It’s Not the End,” with the final notes ending with an organ outro.
Clearly, his music is based on a propensity for warm, electric songs that are light and which do not follow any particular style as he weaves in and out of spontaneous musical expressions. You almost get the sense that he is playing out childhood fantasies that he can only accomplish as an adult musician.
He plays and layers the synth almost as a child would play a Casio keyboard – the difference is the level of artistic maturity – not expression – but without losing the child-like charm of his songs.
