Fruit Bats at The Earl

Well, that was a fun show!

About two years ago, Fruit Bats officially called it quits.  Frontman Eric D. Johnson said that he would keep composing and performing his solo music, but at that point saw no reason to continue his efforts under the Fruit Bats name.  But he apparently had a change of heart, as not only have the Fruit Bats regrouped, but last evening they played the second night of a national tour, a headlining tour before a larger one this fall opening for My Morning Jacket, and Johnson further announced that there's a new Fruit Bats album coming out soon.

But I'm ahead of myself.  Before these announcements were made, Atlanta's Madeline opened the evening.

We saw Madeline earlier this summer, opening for Torres back in July,  We loved her set then and we loved it last night as well, and if you're interested we included some of her music in our earlier post and see no need to post it here again.

Next band up was Horse Thief from Denton, Texas.  Everything I knew about Horse Thief was from this one video of the band's Cameron Neal getting a haircut from some Brooklyn hipster, which has been on the front page of CMJ.com for some nine months now for some reason.

I real liked Horse Thief's folk-rock sound and Cameron Neal's odd-sounding, slightly nasal vocals, and a few of the songs even sounded familiar to me although I don't know from where (soundtracks maybe).  Their set seemed too short if anything, and I would gladly have listened to them for a whole hour, provided they have that much material.   

I look froward to hearing more from Horse Thief in the future, and in retrospect I regret not picking up any of their recordings at the merch table when I had the chance.

We've seen Fruit Bats once before, at Bumbershoot a few years ago (2012, I beleive) and we saw frontman Eric D. Johnson perform solo at the incredibly-cool-and-unbelievably-fun Marmoset day party during MFNW (RIP) 2013.  Shortly after that set, Johnson announced the end of Fruit Bats, which brings us back, finally, to the top of this post.

Part of what made the show so much fun last night was the rapport between Johnson and the very friendly and  appreciative audience, many of whom were singing along to every line of every song, and clearly adored the band every bit as much as did your humble narrator.  Fruit Bats covered a few new songs, including one outstanding song that they claimed was the very first time it had been played live, but by and large they played an outstanding selection of fan favorites from their many albums, a play list that could well have been culled from fan requests.

They played basically everything you could have wanted to hear at a Fruit Bats show except, notably, Tony The Tripper, which someone in the audience swore to me he had seen on the setlist, implying that the band was ad libbing their way through the set.  But their set did include The Ruminant Band, You're Too Weird, Tangie and Ray (my favorite), My Unusual Friend, and toward the end of the night, The Ruminant Band. 

Their encore included When You Love Somebody, and about the only song they didn't play and I had wanted to hear was Slipping Through The Sensors.

After the set, I bought a vinyl copy of the band's 2011 album Tripper, and then went out and splurged and also purchased the CDs for Mouthfuls (2003), Spelled In Bones (2005), The Ruminant Band (2009), and even Eric D. Johnson's 2014 solo album EDJ, basically their entire discography, because why not?  My only regret is not picking up any Horse Thief while I was at it.