Spelled in Bones
Here's an awesome album for floating around back country roads in an old Volvo station wagon. This is folk-based pop music that's meditative, fun, and deliriously repetitive. If you've never heard the Fruit Bats, imagine a less ambitious version of theShins, a well-worn copy ofAmerican BeautyreplacingSeventeen Secondson the turntable, and you're pretty close. If you're a devotee, you should know that Gillian Lisee is not on this record. In her stead we have Dan Strack, who played with principal singer-songwriter Eric Johnson in the poorly named but excellent band I, Rowboat.Spelledis a minor shift towards bigger things: the themes are more cosmic and the music sounds less like the product of bedroom strumming than before. "Earthquake of '73," "Lives of Crims" and "Born in the ‘70s" – these are big, beautiful, elegiac songs. Stick ‘em in a popular romantic comedy and watch this band become household names.–Mike McGonigal