<\/p>\n
Sitting in his L.A. home earlier this year, Eric D. Johnson, the leader of shapeshifting indie-rock band Fruit Bats, kicked around the idea of making a short EP that would serve as a \u201cmid-term project\u201d between his last album, 2023\u2019s A River Running to Your Heart<\/em>, and the next full-band Fruit Bats<\/a> record.<\/p>\n Initially, he was going to include a number of B-sides, but Johnson says he \u201caccidentally\u201d wrote a few songs that kickstarted a songwriting hot streak. The tracks he had planned to simply lay down in his guest bedroom were brought to longtime co-conspirator, producer Thom Monahan, and unexpectedly, Fruit Bats had a new album, Baby Man<\/em>, released last week.<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t like mandates when I\u2019m making a record,\u201d Johnson tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cBut I wanted a sense of minimalism and also a sense of immediacy. With Thom on board, it\u2019s kind of like maximalist minimalism.\u201d<\/p>\n For an artist whose career got off to an admittedly slow start, Johnson has used the second half of his career as a creative rebirth. Despite being signed to the culture-changing label Sub Pop for four albums in the 2000s, Fruit Bats never achieved the same level of acclaim as many of their labelmates, like the Shins and Sleater Kinney, and Johnson disbanded the collective at the end of its 2013 tour.<\/p>\n After a few years on the sidelines, Fruit Bats returned and dropped a series of well-received albums through venerable North Carolina indie label Merge Records, including a 2020 cover of Smashing Pumpkins\u2019 complete Siamese Dream<\/em> album. In between Fruit Bats albums and tours, Johnson formed Bonny Light Horseman<\/a> too, the folk supergroup with Josh Kaufman and Anais Mitchell.<\/p>\n Now, with Baby Man<\/em>, he\u2019s further celebrating the simple beauty of folk. The album is a stripped-down 10-song effort that was knocked out over a week in February. Unlike full-band Fruit Bats albums, Johnson leaned hard into sparseness, particularly on the piano-driven title track. \u201cI\u2019m dumber now than I was as a baby,\u201d he says of the self-critical song.<\/p>\n Lyrically, Baby Man <\/em>is a departure from previous Fruit Bats material. Johnson says his writing on past albums has been somewhat autobiographical, while here, he aimed for a \u201csnapshot of a week in the life,\u201d ultimately finding something rawer and more personal than he\u2019s ever been. \u201cThis one is a little close to the bone for me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n But according to Johnson, elements of what Baby Man<\/em> addresses, the way it was recorded, and its minimalist approach, caused folks around him to ask about his well-being. He admits there\u2019s a lot of regret on the LP. Specifically, he cites \u201cBuilding a Cathedral,\u201d inspired by Johnson\u2019s first tarot card reading (\u201cThe work you leave behind is your cathedral, but what size of it is important?\u201d he wonders), and \u201cMoon\u2019s Too Bright,\u201d where he\u2019s \u201csleeping bad because I\u2019m mad at myself.\u201d<\/p>\n There were spontaneous, albeit not as profound, moments when specific phrases in conversation turned into the impetus for a song. \u201cThis dog\u2019s been barking outside my window every night,\u201d inspired \u201cCreatures From the Wild,\u201d in which Johnson honors his late dog, while an aside he said to Monahan ended up on \u201cPuddle Jumper.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat last one came together when Thom asked me what I was doing on that day and I said, \u2018I\u2019m just trying to write a couple more songs,\u2019\u201d Johnson recalls with a laugh. \u201cI\u2019ve had a long, bumpy career, so you have to treat everything like it\u2019s the biggest thing you\u2019ve ever done, or that no one will hear it, which is always possible.\u201d<\/p>\n While Baby Man <\/em>was the product of that low-key creative surge, Johnson says that the next Fruit Bats record, already in the can, is a \u201crip-roaring pop record\u201d that serves as a companion piece. Johnson is going to be busy for the next few years: Along with Fruit Bats, his Bonny Light Horsem<\/a>a<\/a>n<\/a> bandmates are thinking about a new album.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m still gaining confidence and chops; I\u2019m a late bloomer,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cI always have been for everything for everything I\u2019ve done, which makes this all new to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sitting in his L.A. home earlier this year, Eric D. Johnson, the leader of shapeshifting indie-rock band Fruit Bats, kicked around the idea of making a short EP that would serve as a \u201cmid-term project\u201d between his last album, 2023\u2019s A River Running to Your Heart, and the next full-band Fruit Bats record. Initially, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2021758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[371714,340936,314737,371713],"class_list":["post-2021757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-eric-d-johnson","tag-fruit-bats","tag-rolling-stone","tag-thom-monahan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Fruit-Bats-Fly-Again-on-the-Devastatingly-Minimalist-\u2018Baby-Man.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2021757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2021758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2021757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2021757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2021757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}