The Chicago based folk-rockers release 8th studio album.
Eric D. Johnson’s Fruit Bats (who five years ago released one of the greatest songs ever recorded) have announced their return on March 5th with ‘The Pet Parade’, an album about “the beauty and absurdity of existence”, and he’s shared the first track ‘Holy Rose’ ahead of its release, a song that introduces itself as a ballad but soon blossoms with fuzzed-out guitars and organ. You can listen to it below.
Johnson says of the track: “Holy Rose is possibly the most “direct” song on The Pet Parade. I wrote this about the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Sonoma County and was finishing it up right when fire season was raging in California. My wife grew up in Sonoma County and just had to sit there and watch her childhood burn down. This is a love song to the native West Coasters.”
While many of the songs on ‘The Pet Parade’ were actually written before the pandemic, the record wasn’t unaffected by the times we live in. As an example, producer Josh Kaufman (who most recently worked on Bonny Light Horseman, in which he plays with Johnson and Anaïs Mitchell) was brought in for his bandleading abilities. However, Johnson, Kaufman, and the other musicians on The Pet Parade—drummers Joe Russo and Matt Barrick, singer-songwriter Johanna Samuels, pianist Thomas Bartlett, and fiddler Jim Becker — were forced to self-record their parts in bedrooms and home studios across America.
Johnson celebrates 20 years of Fruit Bats in 2021. “I’m still really excited to make records,” he says. “Lucky and happy and maybe happier that things went slower for me. I’m savoring it a lot more.”
Tracklist:
1. The Pet Parade
2. Club Pilot
3. Discovering.
4. The Balcony
5. Her For You, For Now
6. On The Avalon Stairs
7. Eagles Below Us
8. Holy Rose
9. All In One Go
10. Gullwing Doors
11. Complete
