ALBUM REVIEW: Fruit Bats Mark the Power of Place on ‘A River Running to Your Heart’

“We all want a home / metaphorical or real / some place to make us feel whole,” Eric D. Johnson sings on the latest record — his tenth — under his Fruit Bats moniker, A River Running to Your Heart. As has always been the case in his more than 20-year career, Johnson is exploring the chapters of life with a deeply felt sense of place.

Eric D. Johnson / Fruit Bats (photo by Chantal Anderson)

Whether the sun-soaked ease of Los Angeles, which Johnson called home for so many years, or the grounded Midwest that raised him, he is masterful at capturing the essence of and emotions tied to wherever he’s planted his feet. And after relocating to the Midwest from Southern California in the pandemic, and then returning to LA, Johnson seems particularly meditative on what it means to be home. In fact, the very thesis of A River Running to Your Heart is that home is wherever and with whomever you make it, even if a little part of yourself remains in each place after you’ve gone.

California and the Pacific Northwest have featured heavily in much of Johnson’s music, and maybe never more than in these songs. The cheeky play on words of “Rushin’ River Valley” (referring to the Russian River Valley area around Santa Rosa) is a call back to the early days of Johnson meeting his wife. “Waking Up in Los Angeles” is a sweet reminder of why he still loves his old city. “Tacoma” is a love letter to place that, in Johnson’s words, is the only place that makes him feel alive. These arrangements are some of the album’s most buoyant. Johnson, who self-produced for the first time, tries on a more shimmery sound elsewhere in songs like the serene “It All Comes Back,” the slinky groove-filled “Sick of this Feeling,” and the synth-laden “The Deep Well,” all of which tap into that post-pandemic sense of newness, both desired and forced.

Where Johnson really excels in this exercise of understanding yourself through all the places that have shaped you is with the album’s simplest tune, “We Used to Live Here.” In just under three minutes, with almost nothing but a soft acoustic guitar and Johnson’s elastic, reedy voice, he manages to craft an entire world of universal nostalgia. “We were the perfect age / And the rent was so low,” he sings, vividly conjuring the wide-eyed optimism of youth, the pride of living in your first place that’s only yours. That ability to look back without any bitterness toward the inevitable changes that happen to all the places you love is what makes this record so special. It basks in the warmth of what once was, remembering everything at its golden best.

Fruit Bats’ A River Running to Your Heart is out April 14 on Merge Records.