The first thing you notice about 'Velvet Hours' is what is missing. No stacked ad-libs, no eight-bar drop, no guest verse parachuted in for a playlist look.
Instead there is a band playing slightly behind the beat, a Rhodes that never quite resolves, and a vocalist who lets phrases end early and leaves the space alone.
It falters twice. A five-minute interlude in the back half stalls the sequence, and the closing track reaches for gospel scale the arrangement has not earned.
Everywhere else, the record makes a persuasive argument that the genre's best modern move is subtraction.
