To cut to the chase, according to Wikipedia, this is a Folk Rock band from Chicago & now based in Seattle. Cool cities. Must mean cool music. Most of the music has been based around Eric Johnson's style for the past decade. BUT! Their album The Ruminant Band broke that trend, so my first impression of them is their whole band's ideal output. According to Eric, he really let the rest of the guys play this time.
I didn't like this album.
I have no idea what the rest of their albums sound like (this is their 4th to date), and I'm actually curious to see how different they are. From an interview, it seems that the whole band was really pleased with this album. I found some highlights to the music, and I really liked the first 2 songs. Not love, liked!....At some point on the third track it started getting unenjoyable. I want to call this album a Trippy, Folk Rock, Pseudo-psychadelic album with traces of old style piano and crazy background effects every couple of tracks. That best describes how I feel about it.
The crazy thing is that I like most of those kinds of sounds (except pseudo-psychadelic), but when meshed together like this, it just doesn't work out. I had to listen intently to every little detail in order to appreciate some of these songs. That kind of effort is daunting. The one aspect of this recording that drove me crazy was the fact that this album is obviously yearning to tell a story, and I couldn't understand a word Eric was saying. Folk Rock, right? Stories are important in this type of music.
I'll give the band props for some cool background singers on tracks 2 & 9. Random, and it worked well. Also, the trippy nature of their "folk" instruments really made me smile sometimes.
To say the least, these guys are interesting, check em out at http://www.myspace.com/thefruitbats
-Cory Vogel
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