Since making the stylistic shift from confessional folk-rock singer-songwriter in the 00s to instrumental acoustic specialist in recent years, Michigan-born, LA-based guitarist Tom Caufield has built a modest but enthusiastic fanbase in the US. This is his first UK release, which came out in 2015 back home, and consists of just three tracks: lasting 23, three, and 11 minutes respectively. On hearing these softly meandering meditations – full of deftly plucked Spanish guitar, clad in twittering Moog and sequenced strings – you might just drift off into your own private reverie and not notice when one piece ends and the next begins.
And that’s part of the problem you might have getting your teeth into his music. There’s not much in the way of hooks or motifs, just pleasantly drifting soundscapes that sail perilously close to what you might dismiss as ‘muzak’. It does, at least, liven up towards the end. Palace of Stolen Mirrors draws you in with an elegantly mournful finger-picking figure and intrigues with trickles of piano and heady squiggles of keyboard. As aesthetically pleasing background music it does the job, but as impressionistic art it doesn’t leave much of, well, an impression.
