Fruit Bats – Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001-2021)
Merge Records – 28 January 2022
While it seems to go by in the blink of an eye, 20 years is a long time, and Fruit Bats‘ Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001-2021) takes a backward glance at where they’ve been over all that time. It’s been quite a trip for Eric D. Johnson, and along the way, there have been plenty of uncertain steps, including a brief solo career after disbanding the Bats in late 2013. The subsequent solo release, EDJ, was a self-professed, “career stalling move.” Since 2015, he’s been back in gear, although he’s always been the first to tell you that his career has been less than a complete success, “It’s been a weird career. I didn’t have a ‘huge thing happened to me’, but I get paid to sing songs still, which is insane.“
Insane or not, over the course of those 20 years, he’s written some great songs and some didn’t end up on the discs for which they intended. “Rips Me Up” should have been on The Pet Parade but didn’t make the cut. Opening Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud, the gentle guitars and his high-pitched vocals just didn’t have the right vibe. Still, the song works beautifully, opining an emotional breakup, “Every time I think of you it rips me up/And floating in the ether, I ran, outdone.” Some Harrison-like guitar-licks only add to this outlier.
The first disc looks in reverse, heading backwards from The Pet Parade and serving as an entry point for those who’ve managed to miss out on the glories that are Fruit Bats. Johnson calls it “the collection that you buy for your friend that’s Fruit Bats–curious.” Songs like “Cazadera” and “Humbug Mountain Song” illustrate the appeal; Johnson knows a great riff and how to use it. The only mystery seems to be why more people haven’t gotten on the Fruit Bats bandwagon.
For those already entangled in the Bats’ snare, Johnson has spent time trawling through the hard drives to find a number of tracks that might otherwise have never seen the light of day. There’s a delightful, fingerpicked version of Steve Miller’s “The Joker,” not exactly the first cover tune you’d expect, but that’s the glory of the second disc. Other delights include a never-before-heard track, “WACS”, featuring the rough and ready guitar work of Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis, and “When The Stars Are Out”, featuring a piano performance by Richard Swift.
These two discs will cause a lot of head-scratching as people try to figure out why they’ve missed the glories of Fruit Bats. As Eric D. Johnson explains, “I’ve never even really gotten up to traveling on tour buses. I’m still in a 15-passenger van I’m driving half the time, still after 20 years.” If the release of Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001-2021) doesn’t get him out of the van, there is no justice in the world.
Website: http://www.fruitbatsmusic.com/
Bandcamp: https://fruit-bats.bandcamp.com/
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Photo Credit: Annie Beedy