"Picking like this is always welcome," says Eugene Chadbourne, writing about James Beaudreau's guitar playing for All Music Guide. It's playing that reveals, he says, "a mind that can be provoked by intervals and melodies seemingly off-kilter with reality." Paris Transatlantic praised Beaudreau's "Nick Drake-meets-Derek Bailey improvisations." All About Jazz lauded his "impressive inventiveness" and the "delicious ephemeral quality" of the music on his debut CD, Java Street Bagatelles. And German website Tokafi.com called that CD "one of the most astounding between-the-genre[s] albums of 2006."