Fruit Bats

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, butblink and you’ll miss other man-made rejoinders to horizontal living dotting the landscape, hill afterhill, built from the refuse of the past: landfills. Some of these hills make for great sledding spots,parks, and trails. Others turn organic waste into compost. The Landfill, Fruit Bats’ June 12, 2026 album from Merge Records, is something else entirely: a mountain dominating the landscape of Johnson’s heart.This being a Fruit Bats record, one scales that mountain to take in the view, to see the future spread out as wide and endless as the midwestern plains. “But the mountain that gives us this vantage point,” Johnson says, “is made out of the trash that we’ve created, the collective weight of the past and where it’s taken us.” When he details that view on title track and lead single “The Landfill” —“a holy vision / of what could be / and couldn’t be / and could have been” — it’s thrilling to hear him sent soaring by a full complement of instruments. But what’s truly stunning is how, in his recontouring from could to couldn’t to could have been, he has lost none of the vulnerability that was brought to the foreground of his songwriting by 2025’s solo outing, Baby Man.