Tripper

Tripper, the new and fifth Fruit Bats full-length, brings together the two major parts of Eric D. Johnson's ten year career as Fruit Bats: combining tracks recorded with his full band, to capture some of the live excitement of the previous Fruit Bats album, 2009's The Ruminant Band and his solo recording efforts. However, having recently worked alone on soundtracks for an extended period, Johnson knew that he wanted Tripper to be more of a solitary pursuit than his previous album.

Though, perhaps the most radical thing about the album is not its haunting production, but the way it allows narratives to shape its songs After previous experimentation with story-based songs, Tripper offers up his reinvention as a storyteller and his new fixation with the abstract. The resulting album, a bittersweet meditation on hitting the road, leaving the familiar behind and reinventing yourself, is a reinvention itself.