It’s impossible to give everything a fair shake around here, and I’ll be honest, the release of Fruit Bats’ LP “The Pet Parade” stunned me last year. We are really digging into this new cut, though, which features as the ‘new track on a comp of faves’ nestled in among the round up of Eric D. Johnson’s favourite works over his career. “Rips Me Up” is doused in a kind of swaggering, tie-loosened ‘70s grandeur. Originally recorded along with the sessions for “The Pet Parade“, the cut didn’t fit the tone of the album, but as a standalone it’s got a sweat-matted and oddly wrecked feeling to it, despite its polished exterior.
Beset by feelings of loss, there’s a pain that’s palpable in Johnson’s tidal breath slide underneath those background vocals. The new collection “Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs” (2001–2021) is out January 28th, 2022 on Merge Records.
Released October 11th, 2021
Produced by Josh Kaufman Band: EDJ, Joe Russo, Josh Kaufman, Josh Mease, Nathan Vanderpool
You may recall that Fruit Bats covered Smashing Pumpkins’ classic second album, “Siamese Dream“, in full last year for the Sounds Delicous collective , and that’s now been shared to streaming services. Eric D. Johnson gives the alt-rock classic a decidedly Fruit Bats spin. He talks a little about the album and his version:
In 1993, I was the prime age to be swept up in alternative radio. But truth be told, while I loved Nirvana and Jane’s Addiction, in my heart I was still secretly wearing a hole in my cassette copy of Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits 1974-78. Somehow, Smashing Pumpkins spoke to all sides of me angsty on the surface but really filled with a kind of Midwest mysticism that spoke directly to my 17-year-old-kid-from-Illinois brain. It’s also the first tape I ever listened to while driving a long distance alone. I’m pretty sure my version of this album is based on subconscious memories of that drive.
I played all the instruments on this. And no, of course I’m not going to be able to recreate Billy Corgan’s crushing, epic guitar tone. Nor could I dream of touching Jimmy Chamberlin’s floaty (yet ever-shredding) drumming. This version is all about hazy memories for me, and how Corgan’s brilliant pop hooks can travel through time and exist in any possible instrumental configuration.
Fruit Bats are playing Newport Folk Festival this weekend, and they’ve just announced a few October 2021 dates, They’ll be back in for a more extensive 2022 tour
Fruit Bats released “The Pet Parade” earlier this year and are also contributing to the upcoming Neal Casal tribute box set.
FRUIT BATS have digitally released their full-album cover of Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins! Recorded between the albums “The Pet Parade” and “Gold Past Life” and originally released on vinyl last summer via Turntable Kitchen, the Fruit Bats version of Siamese Dream can now be heard in full on your stream or purchased in the Merge Records store. “Johnson navigates the songs with intimacy while freely straying from the record’s blueprint. In the original, high drama and explosive washes of guitars greet listeners at every turn. Muting both elements, Johnson strips the songs of their grandeur and amplifies their air of loneliness. The effect is poignant, as if the singer is communing with his younger self.” —New Yorker
There’s no more appropriate way for singer/songwriter/auteur Eric D. Johnson to celebrate twenty years (on and off) of his Fruit Bats alias than by releasing a new album. Even though “The Pet Parade” was recorded in the middle of a pandemic, little has changed in Johnson’s tantalizing sonic approach from his previous seven Fruit Bats projects. It has been a long strange trip for the musician who has coasted on the fringes of the music industry as a cult artist. Along with his work as Fruit Bats he has played with The Shins, composed soundtracks for under-the-radar films, released a solo disc as EDJ and recently and perhaps most unexpectedly, received two Grammy nominations for his work as a third of indie folkies Bonnie Light Horseman.
Yet Johnson has kept the musical faith in his Fruit Bats persona. ” The Pet Parade” exhibits all the honeyed, flowing melodies listeners have come to expect. His yearning, high pitched voice, somewhat like that of Australian star Paul Kelly, is an acquired taste. But after a few tracks, most will agree it slots perfectly into his overall gentle style. These dozen aren’t quite as pop oriented as the ones on 2019’s Gold Past Life, which borrowed heavily from the Bee Gees’ pre-disco period, but they find a sweet spot in their delicate beauty and work that groove for 45 charming minutes.
There has always been a dreamy element to Fruit Bats’ music. That is emphasized on gems such as the flowing “On the Avalon Stairs,” the bittersweet “Discovering” and the opening nearly seven minute, two chord title tune. The latter with its subtle fiddle and fragile splendour could be a Go-Betweens obscurity, as could many of these songs. Selections such as the swirling “Eagles Below Us” share the same displaced, often atmospheric strains that seem plucked from the air, as opposed to laboured over, that was the trademark of the Australian band’s finest output.
The Pet Parade’s instruments were recorded in home studios and bedrooms around the world, then collated by producer Josh Kaufman (another of the three members of Bonnie Light Horseman) into such a seamless whole that most would think the musicians were in the studio simultaneously. This is Johnson’s vision though and when the elements combine as in the floating “All in One Go” with its forlorn harmonica and elusive piano, it’s comparable to the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fit together perfectly.
While there is an aural sameness that occasionally feels repetitious, the material is so exquisitely composed, effortlessly recorded and emotionally sung, this isn’t a major shortcoming for an album that gets more impressive each time you hear it.
“The Pet Parade exhibits all the honeyed, flowing melodies listeners have come to expect.” —American Songwriter
“Twenty years into Eric D. Johnson’s journey with the Fruit Bats project, his smooth, dreamy melodies still feel so singular and all-encompassing.” —No Depression
From the album The Pet Parade, out March 5th, 2021 on Merge Records.
The Pet Parade marks a milestone for Eric D. Johnson, who celebrates 20 years of Fruit Bats in 2021. In some ways still a cult band, in other ways a time-tested act, Fruit Bats has consistently earned enough small victories to carve out a career in a notoriously fickle scene.
While many of the songs on The Pet Parade were actually written before the pandemic, it’s impossible to disassociate the record from the times. As an example, producer Josh Kaufman (The Hold Steady, Bob Weir, The National, and Bonny Light Horseman, in which he plays with Johnson and Anaïs Mitchell) was brought in for his deep emotional touch and bandleading abilities. However, Johnson, Kaufman, and the other musicians on The Pet Parade—drummers Joe Russo and Matt Barrick (The Walkmen, Fleet Foxes, Muzz), singer-songwriter Johanna Samuels, pianist Thomas Bartlett (Nico Muhly, Sufjan Stevens), and fiddler Jim Becker (Califone, Iron & Wine)—were forced to self-record their parts in bedrooms and home studios across America.
“This was definitely not a coronavirus record,” Fruits Bats’ Eric D. Johnson says of “The Pet Parade”, his indie-folk project’s ninth album. “What I mean by that is that I think everyone who writes songs is going to be coming out with a quarantine record at some point in the next five months, but about half of these songs were written before the pandemic. Then again, the record couldn’t not be informed by what was taking place, and a few of the songs I had already completed were weirdly prescient.”
Beyond colouring Johnson’s lyrical content, the pandemic certainly played a role in the process of creating the album. In early March, producer Josh Kaufman visited Johnson in LA for prep work, and the pair planned to re-group for some more formal sessions a few weeks later in Kaufman’s native New York. However, COVID-19 scuttled those plans and, when the two resumed work on the album, they did so remotely, enlisting drummer Joe Russo, The Walkmen/Fleet Foxes drummer Matt Barrick, singer Johanna Samuels, keyboardist Thomas Bartlett and bassist Annie Nero, who is also Kaufman’s wife, to record individual tracks from their home locales.
Though “The Pet Parade” marks the first time that Kaufman had produced a Fruit Bats record, the project immediately proceeded their collaboration with Anais Mitchell as Bonny Light Horseman.
Johnson is quick to note that while Thom Monahan had served as producer of his three previous Fruit Bats albums, 2011’s Tripper, 2016’s Absolute Loser and 2019’s Gold Past Life, that “Thom had gotten really busy as of late.”
“We’re always going to work together; he’s one of my closest friends and we already have plans for other stuff,” he continues. “So when I finished the Bonny Light Horseman record, I was like, ‘I want to keep living in this world. I would love to see what Josh does with some of my other original songs.’ I just wanted to see what his touch would bring.”
As for working with the personnel on The Pet Parade, Johnson likens the experience to “hiring a film director who has his own cast of actors. He brought in the Josh Kaufman Players, all of whom are friends of mine or became friends through Josh. Everyone was in a different room in a different city but, thankfully, all of them had home setups. Then there’s Josh himself. Some of the songs are just the two of us playing everything, which was fine by me because I adore the guy and he is an absolute monster of a multi-instrumentalist.”
The Pet Parade
Josh and I both independently had this idea that we should do a song that was a hypnotic invocation of some sort. We were thinking about Astral Weeks. Now I don’t think it sounds like that album, but the idea was something with two chords that we could float over the top of in some way. The song was originally conceived like that, and then it became something else.
Josh pushed to open the record with it, but that was a scary decision for me to make. I’m a guy who wants to top[1]load the record—not because it’s some Spotify thing but because, going back to The Beatles, that’s just what you do. So even though I think it’s a wonderful song, it’s seven minutes long, it’s slow, you can’t dance to it and it has two chords. But Josh was like, “During this moment in time, you can’t write a song where the first line is, ‘Hello from in here to all you out there/ It feels like it’s been years’ and not open an album with it.”
I realized he was right. With this record, I’m inviting people to be patient rather than giving them a two-and-a-half-minute banger at the start to suck them in. It’s kind of like telling people: “Do you trust me? Come on in.”
One of my great musical mentors, Jim Becker, plays fiddle on the song, which was a real joy. He’s an old Chicago pal of mine and probably best known these days as a member of Iron & Wine. He’s played on records of mine in the past, but he’s somebody that I hadn’t made music with in a long time. That’s him playing those gorgeous Cajun-y fiddles.
Cub Pilot
This is one of the earlier demos that I had written. I guess you could say it’s a pre-quarantine song. Originally, in a way, it fell into the lyrical thematic territory that I dug into on Gold Past Life, which was kind of like talking to someone and being encouraging to that person. In this case, it was kind of a love song, and as I was writing it, I was either going to be singing it to someone, to you, or I was going to put it in the third person. But when we were putting the song together, all the stuff was going down with the George Floyd protests. Now for better or worse, I’m not a topical songwriter. I love that other people do that and, although my music is on the side of righteousness, it typically exists outside of that in a different world.
So while this song is in no way about the protests, I changed the lyrics from “you” to “we” so that it became sort of a love song to the world. That sounds very grandiose but it felt weird, at that moment, to be writing to an individual. I didn’t want to be talking to just one person.
Discovering
This is the oldest song on the record. A few years ago, before we had even conceived of Bonny Light Horseman, I went out to New York to work with Josh. I wasn’t really thinking of him as a producer. It was just an excuse to hang out and write something together. We did this song and it had mumble lyrics on it, which happens sometimes. I put it aside for several years but once Josh agreed to produce this record, I was like, “Oh, we should do that one,” because I always really liked it, although it was never finished.
Now, sometimes, mumble lyrics can be actual gibberish but, in this case, it was real words and the first line was “He has lived through another night and is quite likely to wake up again.” It seemed weird to have that first line in this moment with the spectre of death feeling close.
“Discovering” is kind of a song about isolation, but isolation in which you can take yourself outside. So it’s about walking around alone outside. I’m not trying to write about it in a romantic or starry-eyed way; it’s a little more like a neutral Zen song about just getting yourself outside and breathing in the air.
The Balcony
This song is about a dream location, which is the balcony of my grandmother’s apartment. We moved around a ton as a kid, but my grandma lived in the same place. She’s no longer with us but my aunt lives there now.
It’s an apartment on the ninth floor and it’s been in my life forever. I often dream about the balcony there, which overlooks a very mid-century stone rec centre. There’s an outdoor pool that is sometimes this lonely, drained thing in the Chicago winter, and then off in the distance is a sliver of the Chicago skyline. I found it to be a very evocative place when I was a little kid for a million reasons, and it exists in my dreams forever.
The song is not really about that, but somehow it just worked its way into the song. It’s a song about patience and it’s probably informed by the quarantine. We almost left it off the record but it’s the most legit up-tempo song we had. So it ended up getting back in, and I’m glad it did.
Here for Now, for You
“Here for Now, for You” is a pretty sad song with some references to suicide, having lost a few friends like that. It’s another one where I kind of spit out the first line, sort of as a mumble off the top of my head. It was, “I feel sometimes like I want to get off the ride, like, you know, that I’m getting called home,” which is a pretty dark line.
I wrote it a long time ago. The music portion of the song has gone through a lot of permutations. At one point, there was a crazy ‘80s pop jam in there, with Joe Russo shredding on drums, but it continued to evolve. It’s a sad song but it’s also about devotion.
On the Avalon Stairs
“On the Avalon Stairs” is probably my favourite vocal performance that I’ve ever done for one of my own records. Singing is always the most intimate and strange part of record-making. I’ve produced other people’s records, I’ve guested and I’ve been there for other people’s processes. It can be hard and I can be very self-critical about it.
I was a singer before I could play any instruments and I’m aware that it’s probably my strong suit. I’m not going to come guest on your record and shred lead guitar—that’s just not what I do. But I can come and sing harmonies and maybe something good will come of it.
In this case, it was very strange being in a room alone, kind of comping my own vocals. That’s the easiest way to get into a wormhole of your own brain; those sounds are coming from close to your brain. I did a couple of takes and I wasn’t feeling it, but then I did one take that was a breakthrough moment. I remember being happy with that vocal take and I don’t usually feel that way.
Eagles Below Us
This is a song about wanting to climb in someone’s head, which is something that we all believe we can do. It sort of sounds like a love song, and it is in some ways. But it’s also a platonic love song, which all of my love songs are—you can sing them to a friend. The great Annie Nero is on bass and Joe Russo is on drums.
When we were on the Bonny Light Horseman tour, we were driving somewhere in the mountains. There was a cliffside to the right and, when I looked down, there was an eagle flying 20 feet below us. I thought it was such a great image.
“Eagles Below Us” was also the working title for the album because I really like that notion. However, it ended up losing out to The Pet Parade, which kind of came in at the last minute and was more elemental sounding.
Holy Rose
“Holy Rose” might be the most direct song on the record as far as being about something. I wrote that one about the 2017 Sonoma County Tubbs Fire. It was one of the first songs we worked on and, as we continued from summer into early fall, these fires started happening again. My wife is from Sonoma County and it’s about her experience watching her childhood burn away.
I realized, after the fact, that each verse and chorus is written from a different character’s perspective. Some of the song is saying, “Get out of there,” and some of it is saying, “I’ll never leave.” I’ve seen the heartbreak of native Californians watching their lives burn. There’s a symbolic notion in the line about “the ghosts of everyone you’ve ever known.”
The original arrangement was going to be a soft sort of waltz, but Josh and Matt Barrick interpreted it as very angry, which I thought was cool. So it’s still a waltz, but it hits hard and kind of feels like a fire.
All in One Go
“All in One Go” was a late add. I wrote it all in one blast— which I may have had in mind when I was working on it—and then named the song.
It seems like all my records always have a song toward the end that takes the form of a gentle acoustic guitar track. I’ll sit down with an iPhone and an acoustic guitar and do something that’s sort of informed by the record as a whole. It’s a little bit of a denouement, which is how “All in One Go” ended up in that position as the third to last song.
Gullwing Doors
Sense of place is huge for me. In fact, that was one of the working titles for Gold Past Life and the original theme of that album. I’m nomadic. I kind of live everywhere and nowhere, too, but for the past 15 years, it’s mostly been back and forth between LA and Portland. When I leave one city, I always write a love song to the other.
“Gullwing Doors” is somewhat about the back[1]and-forth drive up Interstate 5 between LA and points north, which can be the world’s longest and bleakest drive. It’s a driving song, like my song “Absolute Loser” [the title track to his 2016 album], although that one was about driving between Portland and Seattle in the rain. This one is more about driving around Stockton at dusk.
There are also some thematic tie-ins to the other songs on this record. It has a similar theme to “Eagles Below Us” in that it’s a song about human connection. It’s also a little bit related to “Holy Rose” with that sense of deciding between letting go of a place or holding onto a place.
Josh brought a lot out of this one. At first, it was more of a double time, almost disco-y song, but he saw it as a half[1]time kind of epic thing. Josh laboured over all these songs, but I have good memories of him being excited about this one. He did a number on it in a good way.
Complete
Here’s my theory about the last three songs on a record. It’s different than the first couple songs on a record because there are a lot of different ways to look at those. You might put a couple of super jams up front to get people invested or, like in this case, put a floaty song up front so that you can get people in a meditative mood.
But while there are a few ways that you can treat the beginning of an album, I always see the end the same way. I feel like the second-to-last song is the last song because the last song is kind of like the epilogue. The album is done and now you’re watching the closing credits. So that makes the third-to-last song really the second-to-last scene. That’s how I’ve always envisioned it. The second-to-last song is really the end, and the last song is the closing credits.
“Complete” is just me singing and playing guitar at the same time in a room. There are no overdubs, I’m just playing to a click track. I tried to make it an invocation, a little bit of a prayer and a wish for everyone: “You shall be complete.” I know we’re all feeling like there are holes in us right now, so it’s a prayer for good, as best as I can say it.
Fruit Bats is back with their second studio album on Merge Records,The Pet Parade, out March 5th.
News breaks today of a new album from Eric D. Johnson’s Fruit Bats. “The Pet Parade”, an album that emerges in troubled times, living within what Johnson refers to as the beauty and absurdity of existence, is due for release by Merge Records on 5th March.
Ahead of the album’s release, comes ‘Holy Rose’ a song that introduces itself as a ballad but soon blossoms with fuzzed-out guitars and organ. Johnson on this new song: “Holy Rose” is possibly the most “direct” song on The Pet Parade. I wrote this about the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Sonoma County and was finishing it up right when fire season was raging in California. My wife grew up in Sonoma County and just had to sit there and watch her childhood burn down. This is a love song to the native West Coasters.”
While many of the songs on The Pet Parade were actually written before the pandemic, it’s impossible to disassociate the record from the times. As an example, producer Josh Kaufman (The Hold Steady, Bob Weir, The National, and Bonny Light Horseman, in which he plays with Johnson and Anaïs Mitchell) was brought in for his deep emotional touch and band-leading abilities. However, Johnson, Kaufman, and the other musicians on The Pet Parade—drummers Joe Russo and Matt Barrick (The Walkmen, Fleet Foxes, Muzz), singer-songwriter Johanna Samuels, pianist Thomas Bartlett (Nico Muhly, Sufjan Stevens), and fiddler Jim Becker (Califone, Iron & Wine)—were forced to self-record their parts in bedrooms and home studios across America.
At times upbeat and reassuring and at times quietly contemplative, The Pet Parade marks a milestone for Johnson, who celebrates 20 years of Fruit Bats in 2021. In some ways still a cult band, in other ways a time-tested act, Fruit Bats has consistently earned enough small victories to carve out a career in a notoriously fickle scene.
And Johnson himself—who has played in The Shins, composed film scores, gone solo and returned back to the moniker that started it all, and recently earned two Grammy nominations with Bonny Light Horseman—doesn’t take this long route of life’s pet parade for granted. “I’m still really excited to make records,” he says. “Lucky and happy and maybe happier that things went slower for me. I’m savouring it a lot more.”
From the album The Pet Parade, out March 5, 2021 on Merge Records.
Since the late nineties, Fruit Bats has been the music of Eric D. Johnson. including Bloody Marys, major 7th chords, Nashville tuning, tibetan singing bowls and many other things. On “Mouthfuls”, the Fruit Bats tone down the twang of their debut, Echolocation, and offer something closer to a mix of late-’60s/early-’70s folk and bubble-gum shot through with unpredictable electronic elements that, paradoxically, make the group’s music seem even more homemade and organic.
Most of the songs have sunny, winding melodies and arrangements that twist and turn until they end up in a completely different place than where they began; “A Bit of Wind” starts out as a simple, jangly singalong and gradually adds a brass band, strings, and flutes until it becomes a sweeping pop symphony. The lilting vocals and bittersweet harmonies on “Rainbow Sign” and “Magic Hour” call to mind the Fruit Bats’ labelmates, the Shins, at times although the Fruit Bats’ brand of summery, psych-tinged pop is much mellower. From beginning to end, Mouthfuls radiates laid-back contentment, but it’s to the band’s credit that this vibe rarely dips into laziness or complacency, even on relatively simple pastoral interludes like “Track Rabbits.” Actually, there’s a lot going on within the album’s serenity, especially on tracks like “Union Blankets,” which features an intricate mix of programmed and live percussion underneath its strummy acoustic guitars and close harmonies, and on “The Little Acorn,” which begins as a drifting,
Radar Brothers-esque ballad before adding sparkling synths and soft rock-inspired backing vocals. Toward the end of Mouthfuls, the Fruit Bats return to the country-folk fusions of Echolocation, and while they’re still very pretty, they don’t quite capture the imagination the way the album’s earlier, more experimental tracks do. Still, when an album is as effortlessly warm and pretty as this one is, it’s hard to begrudge the band a return to more familiar sonic pastures, and even more so when Mouthfuls suggests that the Fruit Bats’ next album will be even more winning in its ways.
From Eric D. Johnson:
This recording is cut down from a much larger show, a rare “evening with Fruit Bats”—no opener, two sets—that ran a little over two hours. Which was really long for me. How does Phish pull it off every night?
Revolution Hall is one of my favourite venues. It’s a nice theater with comfy seats, which is plush but also leads to people sitting down. I mean, a seated audience is kinda classy in a lot of ways, but I’m always looking for that extra rush of energy as the songs ramp up. At one point, you can hear me (gently) implore folks to stand up (!!). But as it was a long evening—and it being Portland, the beer selection was dank and flowing—naturally the audience got rowdier (and on their feet) as the night progressed, which you can clearly hear in the later points of this recording.
This was the last night of a short tour of the Pacific Northwest in January 2019, so in it you hear some of the earliest live versions of songs off of Gold Past Life which didn’t come out until a few months later. It also includes the only live version of “The Banishment Song” ever, plus a couple of rarely played cuts off of Spelled in Bones.
The band lineup was really special here, an expanded 7-piece lineup that included my stellar frequent co-conspirators Josh Mease (guitar), David Dawda (bass), Josh Adams (drums), and Frank LoCrasto (keys), plus extra special sauce provided by the members of the great Pure Bathing Culture: Sarah Versprille, taking the harmony vocals to a heavenly level (and playing Mellotron), and Daniel Hindman, giving the whole show a delicious gauzy Fender Strat flavor. I’m really happy that our excellent front-of-house engineer Aly Carlisle-Steinberg thought to hit record that evening.
Released June 5th, 2020 The Band:
Eric D. Johnson – vocals, guitar, banjo
Josh Mease – guitar
David Dawda – bass
Josh Adams – drums
Frank LoCrasto – pianos, organs, synths
Sarah Versprille – vocals, Mellotron
Daniel Hindman – guitar
Recorded January 19th, 2019, at Revolution Hall, Portland, OR
Aly Carlisle-Steinberg – live mixing / engineering / recording
Nathan Vanderpool – additional post-production engineering and mastering
From Eric D. Johnson:
This recording is cut down from a much larger show, a rare “evening with Fruit Bats”—no opener, two sets—that ran a little over two hours. Which was really long for me. How does Phish pull it off every night?
Revolution Hall is one of my favourite venues. It’s a nice theater with comfy seats, which is plush but also leads to people sitting down. I mean, a seated audience is kinda classy in a lot of ways, but I’m always looking for that extra rush of energy as the songs ramp up. At one point, you can hear me (gently) implore folks to stand up (!!). But as it was a long evening—and it being Portland, the beer selection was dank and flowing—naturally the audience got rowdier (and on their feet) as the night progressed, which you can clearly hear in the later points of this recording.
This was the last night of a short tour of the Pacific Northwest in January 2019, so in it you hear some of the earliest live versions of songs off of “Gold Past Life” which didn’t come out until a few months later. It also includes the only live version of “The Banishment Song” ever, plus a couple of rarely played cuts off of Spelled in Bones.
The band line-up was really special here, an expanded 7-piece lineup that included my stellar frequent co-conspirators Josh Mease (guitar), David Dawda (bass), Josh Adams (drums), and Frank LoCrasto (keys), plus extra special sauce provided by the members of the great Pure Bathing Culture: Sarah Versprille, taking the harmony vocals to a heavenly level (and playing Mellotron), and Daniel Hindman, giving the whole show a delicious gauzy Fender Strat flavor. I’m really happy that our excellent front-of-house engineer Aly Carlisle-Steinberg thought to hit record that evening.
When Fruit Bats announced its new album and signing to Merge Records late last year, singer/songwriter Eric D. Johnson did so by “Getting in a Van Again.” The 15-minute mockumentary presented a surrealist view of the music industry, while teasing the very real themes explored on his album from last year “Gold Past Life” released in June 21, 2019.
“I know I said I’d be around this year, but here I am getting in a van again.”
According to Johnson, “Fruit Bats has been a cult band for a long time.” With Gold Past Life, he hopes to bring more immediacy to the music and share positivity, hope, and motivation to keep on keepin’ on with a wider audience.
“Fruit Bats makes existential make-out music,” he describes with a chuckle. “But you’re also welcome to dive into it deeper if you want. Good pop music should be sublime like that.”
If you listen to a band for 18 years, you’re bound to have more than “A Lingering Love” for them. With Gold Past Life, Fruit Bats reach new heights that have significantly increased not only their quiver of amazing songs, but also their fan base.
Chicago-based alt-folk band Fruit Bats released a case study in B-roll for their newest single, “Gold Past Life.” At the center of the bizarre music video stands the proud proprietor of a mail-order stock footage company, who is aiming to sell selections from his catalog by showing off his newest satisfied customers:
Fruit Bats (who else could it possibly be?). The proprietor’s Sunset at Beach (with Zoom), Seasonal Bird in Oven and Desperate Businessman Discovers Future clips, and other assorted footage are scored by the band’s easy, buoyant single, some of which include frontman Eric D. Johnson as The Drifter, Desperate Businessman and the Beach Bum.
All music and lyrics by Eric D. Johnson
Published by Furry Good Horns / BMI
Fruit Bats is Eric D. Johnson – words, vocals, various
with
Josh Adams – drums
David Dawda – bass
Josh Mease – guitar
Thom Monahan – sounds, percussion
and featuring
Trevor Beld Jimenez – drums
Neal Casal – guitar
Meg Duffy – guitar
Greta Morgan – vocals
Tim Ramsey – pedal steel
The Fat Angel Sings 