Fruit Bats
w/ Biography of Ferns, the Terror Sheets
Sit & Spin, Mon Dec 10, $7.
Anyone who’s experienced the distinct pleasure of napping on an old sleeping porch knows that somewhere among the scratchiness of the hand-woven wool blankets, the crackling featherbed, and the crispness of the sound-laden country air lies an afternoon of the best rest and tumbling dreams you’ll likely ever have.
Echolocation, the summer-released album from Califone-member Eric Johnson’s Fruit Bats, is a soundtrack to lull you into the kind of sun-warmed sleep that Northwesterners aren’t apt to enjoy for at least four months, now that winter has undeniably settled in. It’s enough to make you want to cry as Johnson plucks his banjo and sings, “Oh what a day for sunshine/Oh what a lazy day/Fireflies like remoras/sticking to the skin and lighting up the sky” (“Buffalo and Deer”).
Johnson’s is a deceptively peaceful world, a time-frozen place where slowed melodies seduce listeners into lulled, permissive comfort before comically violent lyrics shake them into bemused caution. Did Johnson just mention arms ripped off by shooting stars? Marimbas plunk alongside guitar and mandolin as the singer stops to consider how pretty the light is when it “refracts through the glass in your feet.”
If you’re a fan of slightly cracked, left-of-center songwriting, Fruit Bats is your newfound favorite band. And if you’re one of those who appreciates the warped realities and easily caught melodies of the Shins and Kingsbury Manx, or who finds the hairpin-curve lyrics and musicianship of Modest Mouse caressing to the mind, Echolocation is your newfound favorite album. It’s a little sad and a bit contemplative, but that contemplation is of trials and consequences both suffered and served long ago.
Lines like, “And you need it just a little/and it’s more than you can take/like a baby in the middle of a many layered cake,” wrestle the air and then hang in it, haunting ever stronger as they fade into oblivion. Prayers are fraught with images of doves and animal skins, pure and redolent of decay at the same time; stars are compared to alligator eyes, and a desperate soul begs for happiness. It’s not the sky you live beneath in California, it’s the “smoke.” And icebergs crash through visions of garlic fields in Johnson’s buzzing dream world.
How Johnson manages to make something so buggy and itchy such a beautiful lullaby is a testament to his songwriting abilities. Players contribute instruments such as ukulele, clarinet, pedal steel, something called a Cajun triangle, and even crickets, and Johnson weaves them into an interesting cloth, where slubs punctuate smooth patches and sweet harmonies create peace among quietly chaotic jumbles of sound. It’s the kind of thing that might take a couple of listens to fully experience all the parts, or get in tune with the deeply country, often bluegrass-inspired flavor. Maybe you’ll toss and turn for a bit, or maybe you’ll drift right off, but it’s inevitable that Echolocation will have listeners drowsing through mildly psychedelic scenes.
Even a mild catastrophe like writer’s block is ripe with abandonment imagery: “I’m gonna go/this time I know/this city’s got me feeling like a motherfucker/This one is it, and after I quit/I can’t write a love song worth shit” (“Dragon Ships”). Clearly, it’s the unadorned spareness that lends unexpected weight to these songs, so buoyant are they with whimsy and airiness. Simplicity is achieved through sneaky layers of brittle instrumentation and backtracking lyrics. Like the trails that the buffalo and deer trample into Johnson’s land, his verses lead to choruses that reveal more and more meaning with each repeated phrase.
Nope, warped summer dreams to be partaken on outdoor porches aren’t going to happen any time soon, but the CD player works year round, and a hazy, twisted dream is only a listen away–provided you turn up the furnace and tuck an old Pendleton blanket under your chin before Fruit Bats rock you gently, but forcefully, into dreamland.