Ever seen a fruit bat? They are an awful breed, same as their flying rodent relatives. Only fruit bats are part of a branch known as “Megabats.” Translation? Even more hideousness. Check out a picture sometime: they’re more like flying foxes.
Now if you’ve ever heard the band of the same name, they’re quite antithetical to their namesake. The Fruit Bats seem less in tune with the blind, night stalking, flying beast. They’re harmonious and tight—the Seattle-by-way-of-Chicago group’s sound feels deep, seeking, and wise, a sort of folk-rock barn owl. Eric Johnson, the band’s founding (and sole surviving) member, orchestrates something that looks and feels like a silo swift.
Keeping within the animal theme, The Ruminant Band is the Fruit Bats’ first effort since 2005’s Spelled In Bones and just the fourth full-length in their ten-year career. Creating music at a slow, steady pace fits the overall tempo. The album is eleven tracks of blended folk and throwback country rock, Allman Brothers flavored. It’s filled with harmonies tending toward harrowing, and lavish pedal steel accents. Johnson (now a member of the Shins) has always had a knack for creating songs that can be heard and appreciated over and over again—here, in what amounts to his side project, he’s accomplished the same with “The Hobo Girl” and “Being On Our Own.” They’re filled with kne- knocking feelgood, a welcome distinction from the Makers Mark-and-mash tendency within the greater alt-country movement. Few bands would dare soar as high as The Fruit Bats do on the album’s title song, a true tip of the cap to the ancient standard Brothers And Sisters. The album’s opener, “The Primitive Man,” casts a concurrent theme of thoughtfulness over The Ruminant Band that emerges later in “Singing Joy To The World” and “Feather Bed.”
Slow, perhaps ruminant, The Fruit Bats have tended in their career toward repaying patience by creating records that are complete. This effort here is the same. After repeated listens, soft and loud, I want to drive somewhere far from here. Somewhere I can park outside of an amber field and think it out. Watch whatever soars from an old barn and iron out whatever it is I’m grinding on.
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