Fruit Bats

Fruit Bats – A River Running to Your Heart (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 34:43 minutes | 682 MB | Genre: Indie Folk, Indie Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Merge Records

A River Running to Your Heart, the new album from Eric D. Johnson’s long-running folk rock outfit Fruit Bats, represents the fullest realization of his creative vision to date. It’s a sonically diverse effort that largely explores the importance of what it means to be home, both physically and spiritually. And while that might seem like a peculiar focus for an artist who’s constantly in motion, for Fruit Bats, home can take many formsfrom the obvious to the obscure. The album will land in stores on CD, LP & Peak Vinyl LP (opaque blue & white color vinyl) on April 14th, 2023.Self-produced by Johnson a first for Fruit Bats with Jeremy Harris at Panoramic House just north of San Francisco, it’s Fruit Bats’ tenth full-length release. The album finds the project in the middle of a people-powered climb leading to the biggest shows, loudest accolades, and most enthusiastic new fans in Fruit Bats history! It’s hard to pinpoint a single reason for this mid-career resurgence. But after two decades of making music, hard-earned emotional maturity has clearly seeped into Johnson’s already inviting songs, resulting in a sound that’s connected with audiences like no other previous version of the band.Johnson, also a co-founder of Grammy nominated outfit Bonny Light Horseman, developed part of the album organically through long studio jams with his ace back-up (guy 1 uy2 guy2). This is in sharp contrast to his most foundational works, which would often sprout from 4-track demos he recorded on his own. It makes these songs feel closer to what it’s like to see Fruit Bats live, where they can let loose a little & lean into their hypnotic Dead-meets-Wilco psych pop impulses. First single “Rushin’ River Valley” is a breezy, kinetic jam blending many trademark elements of Fruit Bats’ songwriting: a driving rhythm, subtle instrumental layers, higher-intoned vocal range, a probing personal dialogue, invigorating melodies, and chord progressions that slowly build toward something a feeling bigger than each chord on its own.

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Fruit Bats – The Pet Parade (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 44:20 minutes | 477 MB | Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Merge Records

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.

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.

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Fruit Bats – Siamese Dream (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 44:27 minutes | 499 MB | Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Merge Records

Last year, Fruit Bats covered The Smashing Pumpkins’ seminal sophomore album, Siamese Dream, in its entirety for the Sounds Delicious series. What was originally a physical-only release by the Eric D. Johnson-led outfit is now available across streaming services.

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Fruit Bats – Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001–2021) (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 40:46 minutes | 448 MB | Genre: Indie Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Merge Records

Eric D. Johnson, the creative force behind Fruit Bats, doesn’t spend a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror. “Maybe it speaks to some Midwest thing,” he says. “Don’t be overly reflective or navel-gazing. And as a songwriter, you always want to be looking forward, not backward.” But with the 20th anniversary of his first Fruit Bats release (2001’s Echolocation) on his mind, it seemed as good a time as any to take stock of his work—and he’s doing so in the form of Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001–2021), a two-disc collection that tracks the history of Fruit Bats from its earliest days to right now. Thoughtfully compiled by Johnson himself, this set is split in two distinct halves.
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