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The midwest, particularly the part of the midwest Eric D. Johnson hails from, is a largely flatexpanse. Zipping through it on the highway, 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 landfills. Some of these hills make for greatsledding spots, parks, and trails. Others turn organic waste into compost. The Landfill issomething else entirely a mountain dominating the landscape of Johnson's heart.Over the course of his now 25-year career under the Fruit Bats moniker, most of Eric D.Johnson's output has been the product of patience and fine-tuning. His songs, to borrow aphrase, are slow growers, given life on albums that encompass long stretches of time andmemory. Baby Man changed that - he disallowed himself from referring to material he'dbeen working on before laying the album down, utilizing the morning pages technique ofstream-of-consciousness, observational songwriting which flowed directly into his afternoonrecording 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.Baby Man's closeness to Johnson's heart and the close attention to his voice and instrument it'sminimalist-maximalist ethos required uncorked something in him as he wrote towards a newfull band effort. InchThat session was over,Inch he explains, Inchbut there was way more to explore. Iliked the immediacy of it, and I wanted to see how that would translate into a full-band FruitBats record.Inch Within weeks, he was back in a studio, this time with his band - David Dawda(bass), Josh Mease (guitars, synth), Frank LoCrasto (piano, synth), and Kosta Galanopoulos(drums) - with whom Johnson has spent over a decade building Fruit Bats into one of t
