Fruit Bats are set to release their newest full-length, The Ruminant Band on Sub Pop August 7. The album is full of more solid, unpretentious, folk/pop hits that will bring about feelings of hope, nostalgia, joy, regret, and beauty. This is because Eric Johnson, main songwriter and driving force of the band, taps into these worlds of humanity more acutely than most. It's just a vibe I get, true, but it's a vibe I'd put money on. This guy has a knack for finding diamonds buried in the coal of everyday life, and tell me, who doesn't love diamonds?
Here's a good sense of who we're dealing with here. From his blog:
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This picture above was taken by me, with a blue plastic Fisher Price 110 camera. I'm guessing the year as 1986. That tiny brownish plateau in the far distant middle of the picture was (and is) a landfill. I had never really seen a mountain yet in 1986, and this was as close as it got. I was pretty obsessed with this thing. It was the most dramatic piece of the horizon for miles until you hit the towering skyscrapers of Chicago. In the winter it would get covered in snow like a little tiny Matterhorn. If you ever got up close enough you'd see that the whole mound was covered in busy flocks of gulls, crows, and garbage trucks zooming up and down the side. The area around it was no less captivating to me - a patchwork of corn and soybean fields, some natural prairie, a trickly little river, a Civil War era cemetery, and an old stone quarry that, like all old stone quarries, was haunted by the ghosts of drowned boys. And this big garbage heap towering over it all. It was creepy and weird and beautiful and rad.I went back to visit my folks not too long ago and now the mountain is much bigger and covered in wavy green grass and purple clover. They took down the barbed wire fence around it and stopped filling it, and put a hiking trail right up to the top. The field in the foreground is all McMansions now, though, stealing the view for themselves. These days I live in a place with gigantic gorgeous snow capped beastly peaks, but I still will always love that little trash pile the most of any mountain.
Tourdates:
08.18.09 - Victoria, BC - Lucky Bar*
08.19.09 - Vancouver, BC - Media Club*
08.20.09 - Seattle, WA - The Crocodile*
08.22.09 - Portland, OR - Doug Fir*
08.24.09 - Sonoma, CA - Gundlach Bundschu Winery~
08.25.09 - San Francisco, CA - Independent~
08.26.09 - Los Angeles, CA - Spaceland~
08.27.09 - Tucson, AZ - Plush~
08.28.09 - Santa Fe, NM - Corazon~
08.29.09 - Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge~
08.31.09 - Norman, OK - Opolis~
09.01.09 - Dallas, TX - The Loft~
09.02.09 - Austin, TX - Mohawk~
09.03.09 - Houston, TX - Walter's~
09.04.09 - Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon~
09.05.09 - Oxford, MS - Red Star Bar~
09.06.09 - Atlanta, GA - The EARL~
09.08.09 - Nashville, TN - Exit In^
09.09.09 - Knoxville, TN- Square Room^
09.10.09 - Chapel Hill, NC - Local 506^
09.11.09 - Washington, DC - Black Cat^+
09.12.09 - Philadelphia, PA - Kung Fu Necktie^+
09.14.09 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg+@
09.15.09 - Cambridge, MA - TT's+@
09.16.09 - Buffalo, NY - Soundlab+@
09.17.09 - Newport, KY - Southgate+@
09.18.09 - Louisville, KY - Zanzabar+@
09.19.09 - Madison, WI - Orpheum+@
09.20.09 - Chicago, IL - Schubas+@
09.21.09 - Chicago, IL - Schubas+@
* Johnny & the Moon
~ Death Vessel
^ Pronto
+ Kevin Barker
@ Iran
