Bohemian Embassy 2015
Things I Heard While In The Womb
Subliminal ambience running down umbilical chord into the wonder or the world.
Michigan-born guitarist Caufield has carved a cult niche for himself over the years, but this record, his sixth on a solo path, plays out into a paradox, because its intimacy is rather extrovert in nature. That’s an exact experience of a baby waiting to be born, though, so a pregnant calmness fills “Rubies On Fallen Leaves” that, suggesting a heartbeat, sits in the center of the album, as its folk motif reaches out for a miracle of a lullaby.
Yet it takes 24 minutes of “Waif Among The Reeds,” whose energy turns solitude inside out, to get there, as the electric charge intensifies the expectancy, and when a second six-string chimes in for harmony the sweetness of future life emerges – with anxiousness in tow. Powerful strokes hushed thanks to an organ undercurrent, flamenco-like curlicues and piano shards expand the initial whiff into a gale before streamlining the strum, adding a hint at Bach’s “Air” to the flow and taking it all into a psychedelic fusion. Leading to a finale, “Palace Of Broken Mirrors” comes stately, in Renaissance motion, as a bitter cello buzz and wah-wah do the talking, the engaging dialogue to keep the listener riveted.
Once cosmic synthesizer makes a return to get to the fore, a higher consciousness is revealed in the tidal wave of joy that sweeps over the notes – a genuine joie de vivre. Here are the things each of us should carry through the years, and Tom Caufield captured them perfectly.
*****
