A Dark Joke
Clayton James is gearing up for his next album titled Crash and Burn. He introduced this upcoming project by releasing the new single ‘Burn’ March 7 on Spotify and Apple Music. The musician took time during isolation to learn how to make beats for his music, pulling inspiration from artists like Massive Attack and genres like trip-hop.
“I was trying to think of music that can be enjoyed alone, since all of us were subjected to that for so long,” James told the City Paper.
James faced the hardships many musicians saw during the pandemic. He released the album Rise and Shine last February, which was meant to be a more hopeful EP. “We were on tour on the East Coast when we found out about how bad COVID was getting, so when we had to lockdown everything our momentum was totally crushed,” said the musician. The title of the upcoming EP is supposed to be a “dark joke” playing off Rise and Shine, James added.
“Lyrically I wanted to address everything that’s going on with COVID and how it’s affected so many families and how it’s going to be something we need to deal with for long after this year,” he said. “Everyone’s lost so much since last March, and I just wanted to talk about all that loss, in the way that I do best.”