The Landfill

Description

Le Midwest, and more specifically the region of origin of Eric D. Johnson, is a vast plain. Crossing it on the highway, you can see towns and villages appearing on the horizon, but you don't notice the other human constructions that dot the landscape, hill after hill, built with the waste of the past: landfills. Some of these hills offer superb sledding slopes, parks, and trails. Others turn organic waste into compost. The Landfill is something entirely different: a mountain that dominates the landscape dear to Johnson. Over his 25-year career under the name Fruit Bats, Eric D. Johnson's work is the result of patience and constant refinement. His songs come to life on albums that embrace long periods of his life and memories. The recording of Baby Man was a game changer: the artist forbade himself from referring to the tracks he was working on before the album's recording, using the stream of consciousness technique, creating a striking testament to Johnson's talent as a singer-songwriter. Baby Man, and the particular attention paid to his voice and instrument, released something in Johnson while writing a new album with a full band, and a few weeks later, he was back in the studio, this time with his band: David Dawda (bass), Josh Mease (guitars, synthesizer), Frank LoCrasto (piano, synthesizer), and Kosta Galanopoulos (drums). With these musicians, Johnson spent over ten years making Fruit Bats one of the most sought-after live acts in the indie rock scene. Listening to The Landfill, it is easy to understand why: this band is simply exceptional. The Landfill is Fruit Bats' most live album. By reducing the number of tracks that usually make up a song with the whole band, the dreamlike and psychedelic dimension of their sound is more intense than ever. Time and space merge into the sublime as the band unites around Johnson's ethereal voice on "That Goddamn Sun." Finding a subtle balance between ecstatic romance and melancholy, "Think Aboutcha" sits between the sublime and the tragic, between the E Street Band and Paul McCartney, with a lightness tinged with an extraordinary gravity, while "Perhaps We're a Storm" charges headlong into the unknown. All these songs immediately assert themselves as among the best in Eric D. Johnson's ever-expanding repertoire. It is the most impressive peak he has reached so far, musically and lyrically: a collection of fiery tracks, performed by a full band, could not be more sincere and authentic regarding his hopes and anxieties, his dreams and failures, his past and his future, as if there were only him, his guitar, and the listener.