Metronome Magazine, May 2008

ERICH GROAT
FOUND MISSING- VOL. 2
12-SONG CD

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Erich Groat is a former member of Boston popsters Baby Ray. That group disbanded some years back and Groat left these shores to teach linguistics and the English language at the American Language Center in Morocco, but he has never given up on his music. On Found Missing- Volume 2, Groat offers up a collection of mesmerising lo-fi gems in the vein of XTC on summer vacation that were previosly recorded between 2000 and 2006. Wailing guitars screach out interesting riffs while Groat sings in unafected style. It's artsy pop at it's best and an extension of the kind of flair Baby Ray exhibited in their heyday. Kudos to musician Kevin MacDonald for compiling and producing Volume 2, an ambition that keeps Groat's music alive and well in the U.S. even when he's not.

The Noise, December 2007

ERICH GROAT
Found Missing Volume 2: 1998-2006
12-song CD

At its best, this collection offers a cure for inanity by providing fast comfort for normal sorrow; it tumbles down like falling sugar for bitter, deluded apes. “Adam Will” and “Full Spectrum Dominance” are sloe-eyed Savage Republic-like sagas; “Well Fed Head” is a churning technological nightmare incantation; “Jimmers and Quince” an ominous, mind-manifesting pastoral; “Fucked Up,” a philosophical, quietly terrifying, folk-jangling, culture-jamming charm and talisman. It doesn’t stop there: we also get “Chicken Out,” another tuneful and wise acoustic roundelay; the epically sinuous and winding instrumental “K2”; the mimetically chundering and sputtering “Roll the Ocean” and, best, the ineffably sad but lovely circular acousticism of the two-stage lament “Bombed Out.” Bonus: The eerie musical setting for the Edward Lear nonsense verse “The Owl and the Pussycat.” If poets are priests, and novelists are anthropologists, and playwrights are sociologists, and humorists are psychologists, then songwriters are mathematicians with a touch of the poet. That is why they can rip at our souls. Like painters they are eccentrics. Like actors they are solipsists. Yet the best performing songwriters also keep our present faith and pass it down. Seldom with more clarity than on this Baby Ray solo project. (Francis DiMenno)

Metronome Magazine, August 2007

ERICH GROAT
FOUND MISSING Vol. 1
12-SONG CD

Quirky, frenetic, and spiraling wildly out-of-control, Erich Groat, former member of Brain Helicopter and Baby Ray, is hunted down and mystically tracked out-of-body by musician/producer Kevin MacDonald [Kevin MacDonald Band]. The outcome is a rich, auditory dessert entitled Found Missing Vol. 1 that captures a human life form resembling Groat performing all the instruments with deft precision and singing in the language of XTC, The Cave Dogs and select Brit pop icons.

Groat is a gifted enabler at creating buzzing rhythms with the guitar that remind you of a reckless dentist drilling molars for cavities. You can't escape it and there's no reason you would want to. It doesn't matter if it's an electric or acoustic guitar, in Groat's hands it's a weapon of massive construction.

Groat's voice is also delivered from another plane not of this world. Whether he's growling like a grizzly, screaming like a banshee or whispering a lullaby, his delivery is purposeful and potent. There's no denying Groat is a one-of-a-kind and Found Missing Vol. 1 is a fitting chronicle of a musician on a mission. Good stuff!

The Noise, July and August, 2007.

ERICH GROAT
Found Missing: Volume One 1997-2000
12-song CD

About half of these songs are Baby Ray demos: out-takes to die for—literally, you might think, after listening to the claustrophobic opener “Psychosomatic” and the spooky dissonance of the droning followup, “Drugs Like Me.” But the uncanny and anthemic “Good Kid Nothing,” is a brilliant example of Groat’s unashamed knack for compulsively bending harsh oddness into repetitive and strangely comforting and familiar shapes. Similarly, “Sad Eyed Girl” has a compellingly ominous and almost hypnotic riff underscoring a double-tracked series of vocally suggestive pronunciatos.

In contrast to these, a song like the beautifully lyric “Cross the Table,” with its ostinado-pulsing guitar, seems to float just over the canon of Western music like a helium balloon. The instrumental “69” is telepathic and vital in its impetus, yet lilting and circumambulatory as well. Similarly, the melodic, solo acoustic piece, “What Fred Said,” while stark, is sinuous and insinuating in its sonic impetus. “Treehouse Rock” is a light, acoustic piece with a haunting refrain that resolves into a nearly shamanic combination of electric guitar and incantation. Best of these is the lyrically and melodically brilliant four-piece “Nuclear Explosion,” a luminously tuneful number with a cleverly self-deconstructing coda.

In between the extremes of light and darkness are songs like the astonishing “Little Animal;” this chopped and channeled and backwards-masked Baby Ray amalgam is oddly resonant, and the coda is brilliant. “Come for Dinner,” is taut and tense and resolves into an ecstatic and grandiose climax that’s chilling and brutal. The high point of the album is the nearly inhuman, intensely pentatonic first minute of the penultimate track, “Lonely When I Do,” which, next, lyrically soars for another twenty seconds then grinds its gears into a heavy-bottomed verse, chorus and extended coda.

This collection of lost-and-now-recovered classics is a phenomenally good album from start to finish. Fans of Baby Ray in particular can’t possibly afford to be without it. (Francis DiMenno)