Fruit BatsThursday, November 12, 2026
Thunderbird Music Hall
4053 Butler Street, Pittsburgh, PA
Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
AGE RESTRICTION: 18+
https://www.fruitbatsmusic.com/The midwest, particularly the part of the midwest
Eric D. Johnson hails from, is a largely flat
expanse. Zipping through it on the highway, you’ll see cities and towns rise up in the distance, but
blink and you’ll miss other man-made rejoinders to horizontal living dotting the landscape, hill after
hill, 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.
