I've begun to wonder if Angie Aparo and P.J. Olsson distribute their work directly to bargain bins, kind of like Gary Busey does with the video store. For whatever reason, it seems that every used CD store nationwide (including stores in Virginia, Michigan and New York) has multiple copies of Aparo's The American and Olsson's Words for Living (joining, of course, multiple copies of the Verve Pipe's Villains, and a smattering of King's X). I haven't heard much from either artist, but the impression "the bin" gives me is that neither is very good.
After a recent evening of CD shopping, I could have easily concluded that the Fruit Bats blow. Out of six Manhattan second-hand merchants, four had copies of Echolocation, and although the disc had yet to find the bargain bin in any of them, it seemed their ultimate destiny. The reason I kept an open mind is that I had seen the group in concert, opening for the Shins and Modest Mouse in late September. The show wasn't that great, but it was certainly tolerable, and you could tell that vocalist/songwriter Eric Johnson enjoyed himself on stage and took his job seriously. It's hard to not at least appreciate a guy who loves what he's doing.
As the live show was tolerable, so is Echolocation, but not much more. The Fruit Bats seem obsessed with one sound, one that I would describe as folk-country indie-pop, for lack of a more appropriate sub-sub-sub-genre label. In short, lots of acoustic guitar and lazy, slow-rolling sentimental compositions, peppered with banjo, ukulele, piano and pleasant vocal harmonies. Clearly summer-time music.
Unfortunately, though, what you hear on the album's first track, "The Old Black Hole," is pretty much what you hear on tracks 2-12. Every song moves at the same country tempo, with the similar sounding folksy accoutrements, and almost-convincing sentimentality. When I forgot I was listening, it was pleasant. When I tuned in more closely, I was left impatient, crying out to the Fruit Bats, "Go somewhere already!" In this way, it may have been better if the Fruit Bats were fronted by the other Eric Johnson, of "Cliffs of Dover" fame, and friend to fellow G3 Guitar Summit participants Steve Vai and Joe "Satch" Satriani. That would have blown my ass off. Then again, I probably wouldn't have been able to hear much ukulele over Johnson's overdriven polyrhythms and unusual dorian modes.
Other than infrequent exclamations resulting from my boredom (see above), Echolocation sparked very little reaction from me, either positive or negative. Chances are, I won't listen to it much. Chances are better that I'll be visiting one of those two stores that didn't have a copy.
