You can always count on Cautious Clay to come up with a lyrical metaphor that’ll have you contemplating the single long after its finished playing and snapping your fingers wishing you came up with the concept yourself. That becomes prevalent once again with the release of his first single since his 2021 deluxe edition of his LP Deadpan Love titled Puffer. Out of fear for being mocked or humiliated for failing to succeed in life we all will eventually behave like a puffer fish, bloating ourselves up as a defence mechanism and leading others around us to think we’re doing better than we are but also feeling like something is off. We lose apart of ourselves each time we do this. Our authenticity begins to dissipate and the larger than life persona begins to have the complete opposite effect of what we wanted it to do, evidently causing our own downfall.

The production helps amplify this message further, giving it an early 00’s coming of age movie sound that encourages us to go out and rediscover ourselves and not who we’re trying to portray ourselves as. Include Clay’s immaculate vocal that evokes an unbridled passion within us that propels us into action and you’ve got a more than welcomed return from this artist.

“‘Puffer’ is a track deeply personal to me. I found a metaphor that feels akin to our modern world: people often behave like pufferfish, in order to appear less vulnerable. In doing so this of course often has the opposite effect, in becoming more visible. And along the way we might lose track of our authenticity, by becoming larger than life.”