Colin Caulfield can cover a song as well as anyone \u2014 his breadth of adaptations dot YouTube like colors in a Seurat painting, vibrant and warm. Whether it be David Bowie, Panda Bear, Ariel Pink or The Beatles, Caulfield uses his acoustic charms to mold these familiar tunes into fresh celebrations.<\/p>\n
But while Caulfield forges originality from the songs of others, he struggles to locate a definable voice when it comes to his own compositions. In Vol. 1, an album created under the guise of Young Man, Caulfield has created a record that is neither memorable nor remarkable but sonically has an aesthetic appeal. Call it lush background music.<\/p>\n
Caulfield\u2019s previous work \u2013 the EP Boy and LP Ideas of Distance \u2013 details an artist working through the trials of childhood and relationships in an exploring yet casual manner. Vol. 1 sees a bolder Caulfield \u2013 he has a full band in tow for this one \u2013 but there remains a deliberate tinkering to the tracks whose titles (\u201cThoughts\u201d, \u201cBy and By\u201d, \u201cWandering\u201d) share this insouciance.<\/p>\n
\u201cHeading\u201d opens the album with a quiet climb of strumming guitars and echoed dreamscapes as Caulfield waits a minute before uttering a note. His 20 seconds of lyrics devolve into a cinematic free-for-all of hi-hats and beeps only to move swiftly into \u201cThoughts,\u201d which now and forever should be the Jack Handey theme song for its staged drama that ends up a bit contrived.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo\u201d proves to be one of Vol. 1\u2018s stronger efforts, Caulfield\u2019s bouncy lyrics belie steady guitar strums and a plinking piano for the song\u2019s first three minutes. In an odd twist, the final minute becomes one-part hoedown, one-part jam out in short enough time frame to make it interesting.<\/p>\n
But the following \u201cFate\u201d labors in territory better owned by Matt Pond PA, while the seven-minute \u201c21\u201d is a noisy venture with no real pivot. Had the song started near the four-minute mark it would be album\u2019s most focused track instead of the amalgam of notes it became.<\/p>\n
The album-ending \u201cDirections\u201d is pleasant enough, though this too is space better trodden by others (we\u2019re in full-on Belle and Sebastian land here, who would never let this go on for nearly eight minutes). \u201cDirections\u201d carries the theme held by a handful of songs \u2013 intermittent lyrics surrounded by various bits of instrumental play. The only direction this song contains is in the title.<\/p>\n
Vol. 1 is not a bad album, but there\u2019s nothing gallant about it. It makes for nice musical fodder at your local Starbucks, more grande than grand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Colin Caulfield can cover a song as well as anyone \u2014 his breadth of adaptations dot YouTube like colors in a Seurat painting, vibrant and warm. Whether it be David Bowie, Panda Bear, Ariel Pink or The Beatles, Caulfield uses his acoustic charms to mold these familiar tunes into fresh celebrations. But while Caulfield forges […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[479],"class_list":["post-1514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-young-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1516,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions\/1516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}