New Fruit Bats! “My Unusual Friend”

Several years ago when I first heard the Fruit Bats, it was via their slice-of-pop-heaven single “When U Love Somebody.” I listened to them nonstop for a whole summer, and many friends received that song on a mixtape. Maybe even you.

So I’m mightily excited by the news from Sub Pop today that they have a new mp3 for your enjoyment off their upcoming album later this summer:

My Unusual Friend – Fruit Bats

…. or how about this lovely, burnished, backporch-sunset older tune? It’s another favorite of mine:

Slipping Through The Sensors – Fruit Bats

The Ruminant Band is out August 4th on Sub Pop. And while I usually don’t quote from the press release, this paragraph flawlessly sums up that quality I love about the Fruit Bats:

“In this often reflexive and world-weary era of popular music, there seems little room for unabashed wonder, or joy without suspicion. Some regrettable fear planted within each of us around the 7th grade or thereabouts still makes it hard to dance, hard to hold hands, hard to say ‘I love you,’ at least without a quick caveat or escape route at the ready. Over the course of three records, the last two on Sub Pop (2003’s Mouthfuls and 2005’s Spelled in Bones), Eric D. Johnson’s Fruit Bats have looked for ways to file down the cynical edge of modern life and found many. Using bright melodies, defiantly major-key chord structures, natural imagery mixed with the occasional blazing insight and tender observation, the Fruit Bats have never shied away from darkness, but more uncommon in this day and age, they’ve refused to shy away from light.”

Precisely.

FREE BONUS: This song is part of the absolutely brilliant new Sub Pop Free Summer Sampler, hosted on one of the flashiest, tackiest, worst-designed website I’ve seen since, oh, 1997.

Perhaps it is best viewed in Netscape Navigator.

2009 Sub Pop Cybersex Digital Sampler Track List
1. Vetiver – Strictly Rule
2. Handsome Furs – I’m Confused
3. Mark Sultan – Hold On
4. Red Red Meat – Gauze
5. Obits – Pine On
6. The Vaselines – Son of a Gun
7. Fleet Foxes – Mykonos
8. Iron and Wine – Belated Promise Ring
9. Tiny Vipers – Dreamer
10. Zak Sally – Why We Hide
11. Fruit Bats – My Unusual Friend
12. Pissed Jeans – False Jesii Part 2
13. Grand Archives – Silver Among the Gold
14. Flight of the Conchords – Hurt Feelings

DOWNLOAD THE SAMPLER HERE

ALSO: If you know any high school seniors who love music, Sub Pop has a VERY cool college scholarship program, with one of the best URLs I’ve seen this month (read it closely).

[top photo credit Annie Beedy]