In The Deep End With Fruit Bats

In some ways, Eric D. Johnson's career has been an exercise in patience. His debut album as Fruit Bats — a name he didn't expect to stick — came out 25 years ago. And while he saw some crossover success with his 2003 single "When U Love Somebody" and a smattering of LPs released on Sub Pop during the height of the indie rock aughts, more consistent recognition came more recently.

Joining Merge Records in 2019, Fruit Bats marked the start of a new era: Gold Past Life (ND review) completed a trilogy of records representing immense exploration, growth, and change. The Grammy-nominated supergroup of Bonny Light Horseman, comprised of Johnson, Anaïs Mitchell, and Josh Kaufman, released its first album in 2020 (ND feature). Fruit Bats has gone on to three more studio albums, a live record, a compilation of B-sides and rarities, a full-length cover of Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream. And never one to stand still, Johnson is constantly on the road solo, with Fruit Bats, or with Bonny Light Horseman.

In the last nine months, Johnson has released not one, but two new albums under the Fruit Bats moniker, a collection of songs he likens to The Grateful Dead's Workingman's Dead and American Beauty — made back-to-back, released separately, and widely considered to be one album in spirit, if not necessarily sound. With the second album of this project, The Landfill out earlier this month, we decided to check in with Johnson about the state of Fruit Bats these days. Like other pieces in No Depression’s In The Deep End series, questions start easier then get progressively…deeper. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

You released Baby Man, essentially a solo-acoustic record, less than a year ago with some of the most raw, vulnerable songs you’ve ever written. Why the pivot back to a full-band record and especially so soon?

It's totally reasonable to dig back to that because that album and this album are 100% siblings, like twins, really. I was kind of referring to Baby Man as a “midterm project,” like it wasn't supposed to be serious. And then, it was really serious. It was supposed to be this lo-fi, tossed off, slightly cast-off thing, and then I just tapped into a vein. All of that album was written and recorded in essentially 10 days, all at once.