★★★★★
Back before coffee-shop quirk had broken into the mainstream, Eric Johnson's delicate melodies felt more back-porch cool than on trend. And no record captures his intimate, twangy style better than Mouthfuls, the second release from Johnson's solo moniker, Fruit Bats.
Around the time of Mouthfuls' development, Johnson was working as a guitarist for various groups including Califone and The Shins...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2013-11-14
★★★★★
Tripper has more of a narrative focus than previous Fruit Bats efforts. On his fifth album, Eric D. Johnson consciously shifts to story-based songs. While he leans more toward the storyteller brand of songwriter, though, he steps away from the sunny folk pop that is most identified with Fruit Bats releases. Tripper is less reliant on acoustic guitar strumming, incorporating bigger, darker sounds. Synthesizers, organs and string sections add a dramatic tension to the narratives...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2011-10-11
★★★★★
From the urgency of the first train-track strums of 'Tony The Tripper', you know you are embarking on a sonic journey through unchartered Southern lands. It tells of living life recklessly with "some brokedown punks and some zeroes", living life for now, being alive in a moment "knowing the world might end tomorrow anyway." The track is interestingly layered with instrumentation akin to echoes of another time; scratchy piano jingles and distant synth resonating like a gramophone...
- www.undertheradar.co.nz
2011-09-22
★★★★★
Fruit Bats' comfortable identity as one of the more eclectic bands on the side of melodic folk-rock took an irrevocable twist in 2009 when the man around whom everything to do with this group revolves, Eric D. Johnson, announced he was to become a permanent member of The Shins...
- thequietus.com
2011-09-21
★★★★★
For a minute there, Fruit Bats rocked. On 2009's The Ruminant Band, the quartet, lead by seasoned indie sideman Eric D. Johnson (Califone, Vetiver, the Shins), eked up the tempo-- sidelining folksier impulses in favor of gently driving guitar pop that channeled Rumors-era Fleetwood Mac. Two years later, they're back to being mellow. With Tripper, the group's fifth album, Johnson dials Fruit Bats' pulse back down, favoring spacious and spacey songwriting that sets the lyrics front and center...
- pitchfork.com
2011-09-15
★★★★★
Tripper has more of a narrative focus than previous Fruit Bats efforts. On his fifth album, Eric D. Johnson consciously shifts to story-based songs. While he leans more toward the storyteller brand of songwriter, though, he steps away from the sunny folk pop that is most identified with Fruit Bats releases.Tripper is less reliant on acoustic guitar strumming, incorporating bigger, darker sounds. Synthesizers, organs and string sections add a dramatic tension to the narratives...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2011-09-05
★★★★★
In the current trend of music, which features heavy use of electronics and a dense, claustrophobic sound, Eric D. Johnson and company stubbornly refuse to follow. Like their previous releases, Fruit Bats stray very little from their original, classic sound that relies more heavily on the guitar rather than the MacBook...
- www.adequacy.net
2011-09-05
★★★★★
You can almost hear the bronchial cough of dogs echoing around a vista of deserted gas stations, hot asphalt and dustbowl scrub on this, Fruit Bats' fifth album - and their most affecting yet. Considerably more introspective than 2009's Ruminant Band long-player, this is to all intents and purposes a solo affair by frontman Eric D. Johnson, who has based the entire album on a bus journey he made to South Dakota a decade ago, alongside a cantankerous hobo...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2013-04-23
★★★★★
Sometime during 2009, professional bastard James Mercer apparently might have slightly fired the rest of The Shins a bit. He seems, by all accounts, to have gotten away with it. Odd though, that the righteously sniffy indie brigade took this act of bawling self-importance and betrayal - potential careerism - so keenly in their stride, isn't it...
- drownedinsound.com
2011-08-29