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Indie-folk favorites Fruit Bats are gearing up for the release of their expansive new full-band album The Landfill, arriving June 12 via Merge Records. Ahead of the album’s release, the band has unveiled the reflective new single “That Goddamn Sun,” offering another glimpse into the emotionally rich and sonically immersive project from Grammy-nominated songwriter Eric D. Johnson.
Johnson, the longtime creative force behind Fruit Bats, shared that the song’s haunting melody actually lived on his phone as a voice memo for years before finally finding its home during a collaborative writing session with bandmates Kosta Galanopoulos and Josh Mease.
“Sometimes words don’t suffice, and a chorus ends up with none of them,” Johnson explained. “This ‘ooooh’ melody existed as a voice memo on my phone for a couple of years. It came to me in a large echo-y backstage tiled bathroom somewhere and then languished for a while.”
He continued, “The lyrics are about something many have written about over the years — the ol’ ‘waiting for the sun to shine’ story.”
Inspired by Johnson’s Midwestern upbringing, The Landfill uses the image of towering manmade hills of discarded history as a metaphor for memory, emotion, and personal growth. The album explores themes of consequence, reflection, and renewal, transforming the debris of the past into the foundation for new possibilities.
The project follows 2025’s intimate solo Fruit Bats release Baby Man, but this time Johnson leaned fully into collaboration with his longtime touring band. Recorded with an emphasis on instinct and chemistry over perfection, the sessions featured minimal overdubs, no click tracks, and performances captured largely in real time. Johnson produced the album himself, while longtime collaborator Thom Monahan handled mixing and additional production duties.
In support of The Landfill, Fruit Bats will launch an extensive North American tour beginning in June and continuing through July, October, and November. Nashville fans will have a chance to catch the acclaimed live act when they perform at The Basement East on November 18 as part of the upcoming run.
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