The Landfill

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The Landfill is the twelfth album from Eric D. Johnson's long-running project Fruit Bats, released on June 12, 2026 through Merge Records. It follows 2025's intimate solo record Ba by Man and represents a deliberate swing in the opposite direction — recorded at Bear Creek Studios in Washington with Johnson's full longtime touring band (bassist David Dawda, guitarist Josh Mease, keyboardist Frank LoCrasto, and drummer Kosta Galanopoulos), with minimal overdubs and no click tracks, producing what Rolling Stone calls some of the most sonically rich work in the Fruit Bats catalogue. The title draws from Johnson's Midwestern upbringing, where the only hills in the flat landscape were landfills — a detail he transforms into a central metaphor: standing atop a mountain built from one's own refuse and using that unlikely vantage point to survey what lies ahead.Thematically, the ten-song, 34-minute album works through memory, old wounds, regret, romance, and the residue of lived experience, treating sadness not as an endpoint but as a route toward perspective. As Johnson told Atwood Magazine, "Landfills are pretty bittersweet allegories for life — they're these mountains you can stand on and look down on the world, but we created them with our own refuse." The songs draw on a wide range of influences, from California country rock and British psych folk to 90s indie and ambient music, and range from the upbeat and hazy "Think Aboutcha" to the quietly cinematic "Silverfish in the Sink" and the panoramic closing title track, which builds into a full-throttle finale with Johnson singing what Rolling Stone describes as a "rock & roll Shakespearean chorus." Early critical reception has been strongly positive, with several reviewers identifying it as among the best work of his 25-year career under the Fruit Bats name. Show more