Fruit Bats

“A lot of art is self-comfort,” Eric D. Johnson recently said in an interview, describing his most recent album, 2019’s Gold Past Life. The record was released under the name of his longtime songwriting vehicle, Fruit Bats, and influenced obliquely by still-new experiences. The death of Johnson’s friend and producer Richard Swift hit hard, and he wrote several songs while in the thrall of the Mr. Rogers documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? On Gold Past Life, Johnson’s sweet falsetto leads songs full of ‘70s AM radio sonics (a sound he favors as much as Swift did) and lyrics that describe nostalgia, aging, and searching. Since starting Fruit Bats in Chicago in the late ‘90s, Johnson has moonlighted in groups like Califone, The Shins, and Vetiver, but he is most at home turning these shimmers of his inner life into song. Joyero (the project of Wye Oak’s Andy Stack) opens. —Josephine McRobbie