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UID:156875@kingstonhappenings.org
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260725T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260725T000000
DTSTAMP:20260610T221422Z
URL:https://kingstonhappenings.org/events/fruit-bats-w-gwenifer-raymond-li
 ve-at-assembly-kingston-ny/
SUMMARY:Fruit Bats w/ Gwenifer Raymond LIVE at Assembly - Kingston\, NY
DESCRIPTION:https://www.tixr.com/groups/assembly/events/fruit-bats-182837\n
 \nFRUIT BATS\nThe midwest\, particularly the part of the midwest Eric D. J
 ohnson hails from\, is a largely flat expanse. Zipping through it on the h
 ighway\, you’ll see cities and towns rise up in the distance\, but blink
  and you’ll miss other man-made rejoinders to horizontal living dotting 
 the landscape\, hill after hill\, built from the refuse of the past: landf
 ills. Some of these hills make for great sledding spots\, parks\, and trai
 ls. Others turn organic waste into compost. The Landfill\, Fruit Bats’ J
 une 12\, 2026 album from Merge Records\, is something else entirely: a mou
 ntain dominating the landscape of Johnson’s heart.\n\nThis being a Fruit
  Bats record\, one scales that mountain to take in the view\, to see the f
 uture spread out as wide and endless as the midwestern plains. “But the 
 mountain that gives us this vantage point\,” Johnson says\, “is made o
 ut of the trash that we’ve created\, the collective weight of the past a
 nd where it’s taken us.” When he details that view on title track and 
 lead single “The Landfill” — “a holy vision / of what could be / a
 nd couldn’t be / and could have been” — it’s thrilling to hear him
  sent soaring by a full complement of instruments. But what’s truly stun
 ning is how\, in his recontouring from could to couldn’t to could have b
 een\, he has lost none of the vulnerability that was brought to the foregr
 ound of his songwriting by 2025’s solo outing\, Baby Man.\n\nOver the co
 urse of his now 25-year career under the moniker\, most of Eric D. Johnson
 ’s output as Fruit Bats has been the product of patience and fine-tuning
 . His songs\, to borrow a phrase\, are slow growers\, given life on albums
  that encompass long stretches of time and memory. Baby Man changed that 
 — he disallowed himself from referring to material he’d been working o
 n before laying the album down\, utilizing the morning pages technique of 
 stream-of-consciousness\, observational songwriting which flowed directly 
 into his afternoon recording sessions. It was both a breathtaking document
  of Johnson’s skill as a singer-songwriter and an unvarnished account of
  the two weeks in which he recorded the album.\n\nBaby Man’s closeness t
 o Johnson’s heart and the close attention to his voice and instrument it
 s minimalist-maximalist ethos required uncorked something in him as he wro
 te towards a new full band effort. “That session was over\,” he explai
 ns\, “but there was way more to explore. I liked the immediacy of it\, a
 nd I wanted to see how that would translate into a full-band Fruit Bats re
 cord.” Within weeks\, he was back in a studio\, this time with his band 
 — David Dawda (bass)\, Josh Mease (guitars\, synth)\, Frank LoCrasto (pi
 ano\, synth)\, and Kosta Galanopoulos (drums) — with whom Johnson has sp
 ent over a decade building Fruit Bats into one of the most in-demand live 
 acts in indie rock. Listening to The Landfill\, it’s not hard to underst
 and why: simply put\, this band smokes.\n\nProducing the initial recording
  sessions in Washington’s Bear Creek Studios\, Johnson set out to captur
 e “the sound of this band I constantly marvel at\, the feeling of being 
 in a room with musicians you love and trust enough to let them cook.” Th
 ey laid most of it down on the floor — no click tracks\, no comped vocal
 s\, and minimal overdubs\, with frequent collaborator Thom Monahan returni
 ng to provide additional production and The Landfill’s final mix. “It
 ’s how we do things with my other band\, Bonny Light Horseman\, and I wa
 s curious to see how it would work with Fruit Bats\,” Johnson notes. “
 It’s both a very personal record\, and my most collaborative to date.”
 \n\nIt’s also the most live a Fruit Bats record has been since 2009’s 
 The Ruminant Band\, and in paring back the number of tracks that typically
  layer a full-band song\, the psychedelic\, technicolor dreaminess of thei
 r sound is more vivid than ever. Time and space melt into the sublime as t
 he band gels around Johnson’s hazy croon on “That Goddamn Sun\,” str
 etching out to accommodate him as he trips from California to North Caroli
 na. In striking a balance between ecstatic romance and melancholia\, “Th
 ink Aboutcha” occupies the blissful-but-doomed intersection of the E Str
 eet Band and Paul McCartney\, playful but playing for stakes that are larg
 er than life\, while “Perhaps We’re a Storm” charges headlong into t
 he unknown.\n\nAll of these songs — most of the songs on The Landfill\, 
 in fact — mark themselves immediately as some of the best in Eric D. Joh
 nson’s ever-expanding songbook\, seekers and anthems alike. It’s the m
 ost daunting peak he’s scaled yet\, musically or lyrically: a swashbuckl
 ing set of full-band jammers couldn’t be more honest and open-hearted ab
 out his hopes and anxieties\, his dreams and failures\, what’s passed an
 d what will come to pass\, were it just him\, his guitar\, and the listene
 r.
CATEGORIES:@Featured,Music,Nightlife and entertainment
LOCATION:Assembly\, 236 Wall St. 3rd Floor\, KINGSTON\, NY\, 12401\, United
  States
GEO:41.931738;-74.018648
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