Fruit Bats’ Spelled in Bones at 20

Twenty years ago this month, Chicago songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Eric D. Johnson dropped his third album under his Fruit Bats moniker. Spelled in Bones took the charming indie folk melodies and landscape painting lyrics of his earlier work and spun them into a swirling, hook-laden power pop masterpiece. The album, with its sepia-tinged memories of youth and lost love and its apprehensions of fate and the future, found Johnson staring adulthood in the face. Two decades on and it has lost none of its punch.

The Lagniappe Sessions :: Fruit Bats

On the heels of their exceptional tenth LP, A River Running To Your Heart, Eric D. Johnson’s long-running Fruit Bats return to AD with their second Lagniappe Session. While the 2014 entry found Johnson and co. covering the likes of Richard and Linda Thompson (along with ’80s avatar Joe Jackson), this new installment pays tribute to both the lyricism of Ewan MacColl and Fred Neil as well as the enduring nature of the chosen pair of tunes. Giants, both.