Hello reader,
How are you today?
I’m excited to discuss another artist that has been making great music for almost three decades: Fruit Bats. Singer-songwriter Eric D. Johnson started the indie rock-leaning project in Chicago in 1997 as a way to share his songs. Now based in L.A., Johnson is the band’s sole permanent member, with various musicians joining him in the studio and on tour over the years.
Fruit Bats have a very prolific songwriting output. That includes the following albums: Echolocation (2001, Perishable Records), Mouthfuls (2003, Sub Pop), Spelled in Bones (2005, Sub Pop), The Ruminant Band (2009, Sub Pop), Tripper (2011, Sub Pop), Absolute Loser (2016, Easy Sound Recording Company), Gold Past Life (2019, Merge Records), Siamese Dream (2020, Turntable Kitchen/Merge Records), The Pet Parade (2021, Merge Records), A River Running to Your Heart (2023, Merge Records), and Baby Man (2025, Merge Records).
Johnson has been plenty prolific outside the band as well. In 2019, he formed the folk group Bonny Light Horseman, alongside Anaïs Mitchell and multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaufman. I had the privilege of talking to Johnson for Grammy.com about one of that group’s three albums. He has also played with The Shins and Califone.
On Friday, June 12th, Johnson and Fruit Bats are back with a new album on Merge Records, entitled The Landfill. While the previous album, Baby Man, was very much a solo effort with the songwriter playing all of the instruments, the new music finds Johnson accompanied by his touring band. Their goal was to create a fully collaborative album, with the band playing live together in the same room. In my opinion, they created an incredible collection of songs that fully succeeds in that mission. It’s a full, engaging listen from start to finish that’s best played loud on speakers.
The album’s title track comes with a humorous conceptual music video, which you can watch above. The album’s press release says the song was “inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind as an initial reference where a lightly tortured man is continuously haunted by a mysterious shape.”
Here’s a press release’s great description of the album and its title:
“The album title comes from the obvious, which can be seen peppering the Midwestern, Illinois landscape where Johnson grew up. The landfill became a powerful metaphor representing a personal, emotional, and cultural history, and using that unlikely vantage point to try and see what lies ahead. The result is an album concerned with memory, consequence, and possibility, where the debris of the past becomes the ground from which new visions emerge. The Landfill is one of the more expansive statements in the Fruit Bats canon, which says a lot.”
While there’s a lot of great songs to choose from, one of my favorite songs on the album is “Think Aboutcha”, the album’s third track. You can listen to it below:
“‘Think Aboutcha’ is a song about a preoccupation that has made its way into many of my lyrics: the liminal space in a dream where memories and love and heartache blur into a psychedelic haze,” Johnson tells SWT. “It was recorded live at Bear Creek Studios on a rainy spring day in Washington State. It pretty much sounds like how we sounded playing in that beautiful barn that day, save for a few tiny overdubs and mix magic.”
I couldn’t agree more. It’s a song that immediately drew my attention with its hypnotic piano key plucking and breezy guitar strumming, along with Johnson’s perceptive lyrics and emotive vocals. While it’s the album’s shortest song, it packs a lot into 2 minutes and 41 seconds. There’s a seamless synergy between Johnson and his bandmates, and I hope to witness it in person at a live concert at some point.
What did you think? Let us know what you think of the song and album!
Check out the cover art and track list for The Landfill:
The tracklist for The Landfill:
- The Saddest Part of the Song [3:02]
- All Wounds [3:14]
- Think Aboutcha [2:41]
- That Goddamn Sun [3:12]
- Silverfish in the Sink [4:18]
- Wild Pony Tower Moment [3:36]
- Fishin’ for a Vision [3:44]
- Perhaps We’re a Storm [3:07]
- Hummingbird Sage [4:43]
- The Landfill [2:56]
You can connect with and listen to Fruit Bats at the following links:
Website: Fruitbatsmusic.com
Facebook: Facebook.com/fruitbatsmusic
Instagram: Instagram.com/fruit_bats
YouTube: Youtube.com/@FruitBats
Spotify: Fruit Bats on Spotify
Bandcamp: Fruit-bats.bandcamp.com
Apple Music: Fruit Bats on Apple Music
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
