FRUIT BATS (USA) SOLO with Jess Ribeiro

The midwest, particularly the part of the midwest Eric D. Johnson (USA) 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