FRUIT BATS - The Landfill

After the solo interlude of “Baby Man”, American musician Eric D. Johnson puts the band back together for “The Landfill”, an album that draws on the loose, candid songwriting of that previous project. Same approach, different context — that's the whole of the revolution here, one that not only gets Fruit Bats back on track but even finds them delivering one of the most compelling chapters of a nearly three-decade career that began in Eric D. Johnson's bedroom in Chicago and still hasn't lost the genuineness and adventurous spirit of its early days.

Recorded live in the studio, “The Landfill” was put together quickly, the result of that much-touted "flux of conscience" that has accompanied the press releases, but also a fair share of critical commentary. To be fair, the exploratory mood of these new songs has certainly drawn strength from the songwriter's rediscovered inspiration.
Johnson's ethereal, aching falsetto tiptoes into the fertile terrain of the '70s, with intense, songwriterly pieces that could easily sit on an old Bill Fay album (the gloomy yet enveloping "Wild Pony Tower Moment") or in the secret songbook of Harry Nilsson (the evocative, minimal "Silverfish In The Sink"), the latter a track that for some may also recall the solo album by Paul Buchanan of Blue Nile.

The truth is that the American songwriter has gone back to writing songs of rare beauty, chief among them the intoxicating country-soul of "The Saddest Part Of The Song", which effortlessly ranks among his finest compositions, while the title track matches its grandeur with a hint of Celtic-soul and an instrumental swagger worthy of the best War On Drugs, confirming that Johnson and co. are in a state of grace.
That the musicians (bassist David Dawda, guitarist Josh Mease, keyboardist Frank LoCrasto and drummer Kosta Galanopoulos) are perfectly attuned to their leader's rebirth is clear in the piano-and-electric-guitar-driven power-pop vibrations of "Think Aboutcha" and in the fine interplay of shadow and light on "That Goddamn Sun". Worth noting too is the skill with which the band makes room for both hope and melancholy within the same song. Even when the music flows with pop brightness and ease ("Perhaps We're A Storm"), or seems to momentarily lose substance ("Fishin' For A Vision"), the overriding impression is that of an excellent, winning display of songcraft that seduces from start to finish.

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25/06/2026