Quirky and compelling.
—Bill Milkowski, JazzTimes

I thought it was great. I've never heard anyone play the guitar like that before. There's so much going on in there and it's quite extraordinary to listen to—a lot of tremedous energy and that real self-propelling rhythmic feel as if he had his own built-in rhythm section.
—John Fordham, BBC 3's Jazz on 3

Although "Moose the Mooche-Cash Style" features prepared guitar, with paper-threaded strings that sound like a marimba made with PVC pipes, the rest of the tracks are recorded with an unadorned electric acoustic sound, remarkable for their panchromatic palette of tones and textures: Hofbauer uses damped harmonics, slides, whammied chords, radical dynamic contrasts and register leaps, tickle-scratches and two-handed tapping to color and shade his musical images. For all its variety, drawing on recognizable elements of jazz and other musical traditions, Hofbauer's voice emerges here unique and distinct, blending the comedic with the tragic—and having some serious fun.
—Tom Greenland, AllAboutJazz-New York

What if a Joe Pass/Marc Ribot/Derek Bailey mutant were to record a solo guitar album thematically based on common fears in modern America? Eric Hofbauer's American Fear is probably the closest you'll come to an answer to that question.
—John Garratt, PopMatters.com

Boston, Massachusetts is truly blessed in having Eric Hofbauer as a member of its improvised music community. Over the course of successive releases he has proved himself to be one of the great original voices and this solo guitar recital proves it in spades. He seemingly and effortlessly has forged a highly individual instrumental vocabulary and this, allied with a harmonic sense that's by turns sly and steeped in wit, is one of the hallmarks of his work.
—Nic Jones, AllAboutJazz.com

...it's a very fine listen.The original pieces are short and well chiseled, while the covers are doing everything they can to make us forget the main melody without ever actually leaving them behind—the best example being Hofbauer's reading of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."
—François Couture, Monsieur Delire

Comparisons with Derek Bailey and Bill Frisell still apply here as Hofbauer plunders the songbooks of musicians such as Andrew Hill, Johnny Cash, Charlie Parker and Fats Waller smashing their various styles together in an acoustic guitar pile up that is both mischevious and playful. Wedged between these experiments are Hofbauer's own compositions bearing titles such as "Monsters In The Closet", "Broke Down... Breakdown" and "American Wonder" that burrow deep into the memory and refuse to budge.
—Edwin Pouncey, Jazzwise

Boston-based Hofbauer, who, in the last decade, has steadily asserted himself as an original if not maverick exponent of the guitar to be loosely aligned with the mighty Marcs—Ducret and Ribot—and Tortoise’s Jeff Parker, provides a wily and at times engrossing demonstration of those possibilities on this sequel to his 2004 set, American Vanity. Hofbauer skims right over the art-pop divide by interpreting Tears For Fears (Everybody Wants to Rule the World), Van Halen (Hot for Teacher), Charlie Parker (Moose the Mooche) and Andrew Hill (Black Fire). But as successful as his deconstructions and wry commentaries on these monuments are, he perhaps reaches his creative peak on nine originals, the bulk of which actually last no longer than a couple of minutes. Hofbauer is more than able to pen a pithy little riff but he really hits heights as a soloist when investigating timbres, and after striking up a guitar equivalent of a saxophonist ‘slap tonguing’, he makes it clear that he won’t settle for what his instrument can do when he can explore what it really ain’t supposed to.
—Kevin Le Gendre, BBC Music

One of my favorite listens of the past several months is this quirky solo guitar CD by Eric Hofbauer. American Fear (Creative Nation Music) is a fascinating blend of recognizable tunes (from Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher" to Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World") to very short original works that have splintered rhythms and fractured melodies.
—Richard Kamins, Step Tempest