Perishable Fruit

Perishable Fruit

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Some of America's finest female singer/songwriters are trying to find a place between country music, folk music, and pop where they can make their literary lyrics felt without allowing the music to fall into predictable patterns. A new milestone in this ongoing quest is Patty Larkin's 1997 album, Perishable Fruit. Larkin, who was a Celtic and jazz guitarist before hitting the folk-coffeehouse circuit, steps into the producer's slot for the first time on this, her seventh solo project. To avoid the temptation of repeating herself, she set herself a challenge--she would make the entire album only with voice and stringed instruments, no drums or keyboards. That doesn't mean there's no percussion on the recording, for Larkin invited her favorite musicians into her home studio on Cape Cod and encouraged them to bang on their basses, dulcimers, lap-steel guitars, cellos, e-bow guitars, and mandolins to reinforce the beat.

The result is an unusual soundscape where all the percussion arrives with a twang, and where delicate acoustic arpeggios are set against sustained electric-guitar drones. The presence of so many stringed-instrument parts creates a big space, but the absence of keyboard chords and reverberating drums also opens up a lot of room within that space. Larkin takes advantage of this room to sing in a whispery, intimate voice about a woman who feels suffocated by old houses, old stories, old fears, old lovers, old arguments, and old music and wants to hit the road, read a new book, get out of the car, take a deep breath, let go of the mace, and pick up a red accordion.

Larkin has a way with words, whether describing the narrow choices imposed by poverty ("You don't say no with an empty belly and a barbed-wire bonnet on a wolf hangin' at your door") or love gone wrong ("I saw you as you drove away, ... you checked yourself in the rearview mirror"). But it's her ability to match these words with a new kind of country/folk/pop/chamber music that makes this album so special. When Larkin sings of drowning in commitments and restrictions on "Coming Up for Air," the arrangement has a thick, underwater drowsiness, but when she declares on the chorus she's "coming up for air, rising to a very new somewhere," the melody breaks free and shines like a fish leaping in the sun. --Geoffrey Himes

Tracks:

The Road
The Book I'm Not Reading
Coming Up For Air
Angels Wings
You And Me
Pablo Neruda
Wolf At The Door
Brazil
Rear View Mirror
Heart
Red Accordian

Amazon.com

Some of America's finest female singer/songwriters are trying to find a place between country music, folk music, and pop where they can make their literary lyrics felt without allowing the music to fall into predictable patterns. A new milestone in this ongoing quest is Patty Larkin's 1997 album, Perishable Fruit. Larkin, who was a Celtic and jazz guitarist before hitting the folk-coffeehouse circuit, steps into the producer's slot for the first time on this, her seventh solo project. To avoid the temptation of repeating herself, she set herself a challenge--she would make the entire album only with voice and stringed instruments, no drums or keyboards. That doesn't mean there's no percussion on the recording, for Larkin invited her favorite musicians into her home studio on Cape Cod and encouraged them to bang on their basses, dulcimers, lap-steel guitars, cellos, e-bow guitars, and mandolins to reinforce the beat.

Customer Reviews:

a new fan.......2005-10-12

I recently saw Patty at a local house concert. This was my first time hearing her music... To see Patty play the quitar the way she plays left me speechless... She is absolutly amazing and so very talented.... I knew I had to purchase more of her cds... This cd is a must have... Patty is truly an amazing artist. I still need to purchase the rest of her collection.... Please purchase this cd and hear the talent of this wonderful woman :-)

Keeps gettin' better.......2003-05-05

I have been listening to this album a lot lately, so I thought I'd check out Amazon to see what other folks were saying. I then discovered that I had at some point given this disc a 3/5. I now wonder what in doG's name I was thinking?! This is a fantastic album. Not only does the album get better as I listen to it more, it really builds up listening to it sequentially. The songs are all at least good (even if Book I'm Not Reading does get old after a while) but Heart and Red Accordian are awesome and really gets me going after getting all depressed with Rear View Mirror.

Needs more than 5 stars... * * * * * * * *.......2002-12-06

Sitting here working, in lower upstate eating Jumbo shrimp and other oxymorons. At a low energy point I started this CD and transported back to a live concert, we caught Patty at a local college.
It was totally phaser-on-overload at first note (I play some guitar, and fell not only in love with her flawless technique and humorous-serious-silly stage presence and Breattttthhhhy voice, but also her unusual garb (more on that never).
I here testify, if you love guitar work with a thoughful mind, and lyrics that cut to the yeasty center of our existential gumbo, hold the MSG, then BUY THIS! BUY THIS! BUY BUY THIS THIS!

Patty, thanks for the autograph and who the hell is the guy expression when I asked about life.
---- Middle aged system programmer in De Nile. ----

Pay attention to the moon rising behind you..........2000-11-03

If you're interested in what I think of Patty Larkin as a musician in general, go check out my review on her "Angels Running" page from September '99.

Go ahead. I'll wait.

Back? Good. Here's the thing about "Perishable Fruit." It was an experiment -- all the percussion is done with stringed instruments, so think guitar slapping and you're halfway there. Except that this is Patty Larkin, and she manages to evoke bongos, marimbas, different and varying multiethnic-influenced sounds with her array of stringed instruments, and it all works.

This is a pulsating, catchy, fascinating album, but even beyond that, it has some of Larkin's most intelligent and moving lyrics.

This new percussion sound reaches its height with "Pablo Neruda," a spare, slappy, plunky coconut-rattling island-influenced narrative. It's also effective on "Wolf at the Door" -- a response to the spoiled cult of chick singers (I read somewhere it was addressed to Joan Jett, but that's unsubstantiated...so far) who "hang their sweaty little black leather dresses on her guitar." "Wolf" is a rocker in grand Larkin tradition, with a bit more harshness than some of her previous rock-influenced efforts, and a bit more depth.

But these spare, unencumbered sounds also support some truly moving lyrics and stories. "Rear View Mirror" is one of the saddest songs ever written; in six and a half minutes it tells the story of being alone with your soul in a soullless world where everyone's got their own agendas. She opens with: "I saw you / I saw you as you drove away. You checked yourself / you checked yourself in the rear view mirror / and I thought / I thought that you were looking at me..."

The story in "Brazil" is equally enthralling, reminiscent of relationship stories in Patty's earlier work. "The Road" is a musician's confessional; "Heart" is a smart woman's.

Amazon's review is right on: this is like a fish in the sun, but it's also like coconut drinks on the beach, a bronzed native playing the bongos...this is Patty Larkin in Boston in the winter reminding you about coconut drinks and fish and a red accordian, playing like a native on the bongos with nothing but her guitar.

I've got every Patty Larkin album and I love 'em all. PERISHABLE FRUIT stands out because of this, from "Red Accordian":

"Pay attention to the moon rising behind you. / Look at life like a tragedy and it'll blind you. / I'll make a fool of myself, maybe that will remind you how."

Perishable Fruit.......2000-10-20

Perishable Fruit has to be Patty Larkin's pivotal disc. In a world drowning in derivative repetition she is original and light, her off beat lyrics floating on stringed textures. The mood on this disc ranges from a pensive melancholy in "rear view mirror" to the driving almost rocking rhythm of "wolf at the door." Finally, I'd be remiss not to mention the enigmatic "the book I'm not Reading." I, too, need someone to read me stories.

Average customer rating:

Quiet Vacation
New yet Old Thoughtful and relaxing
soothing
Creative, poetic rock
A Journey to find a Hidden Gem

echolocation
Fruit Bats
Manufacturer: Perishable
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

Indie Rock | Indie & Lo-Fi | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

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ASIN: B00005NZ4V
Release Date: 2001-09-17

Tracks:

the old black hole
glass in your feet
buffalo & deer
need it just a little
black bells
strange little neck of the woods
echolocation stomp
coal age
filthy water
a dodo egg
dragon ships
blue parachute

Album Description

Echolocation is the debut album from Fruit Bats. Imaginary pop hits about the unsettling nature of the great outdoors, murderous fireflies and vengeful pigeons. Imagine Eno and Elton John wrecking a campfire sing-along. Timeless sounds finding the calm in absurdity. Echolocation creates a world where gentle harmonies and subtle guitars frame lines like "arms ripped off by shooting stars". Mandolin and marimbas lead into a chorus where “ The light refracts through the glass in your feet". Dirty country fiddles bend into synthesizer lines and icebergs into garlic fields. Where perfect falsetto pop mixes with images of urban writer's block and Vikings high on mushrooms all in the same song. It's sexual, space age country music about seeing the beauty in natural disaster. It makes perfect sense. It shouldn't but it does.

Songwriter/ Fruit Bats mastermind Eric Johnson has worked as a tour guide in a model home, adventure footwear salesman, pizza delivery driver/ assistant manager and spent the last few years as a banjo teacher at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music. He also plays guitar, casio and banjo in Califone.

Customer Reviews:

Quiet Vacation.......2005-02-18

It's that spontaneous trip to the cabin. Sitting by the lake, wrapped in gentle mountain weather. No one else around but those few close friends. Watching deer graze nearby. Every star is exposed. Skinny-dipping in the lake. Crickets whispering to each other. Your marshmellow just fell in the fire.

Heavenly and delectable. For the escapist in all of us.

New yet Old Thoughtful and relaxing.......2003-06-15

I play this CD when I want to let my mind wonder thinking about the Falls of the Neuse river flowing slowly to the ocean, when I'm relaxing over a beer, or just looking to escape from a a hectic day. Thanks for the music Eric. You're quite a talent!

soothing.......2003-04-19

This album reminds of the very best of a Midwestern summer: the bugs at night, a cloudless sky, bike rides in the country. I am still amazed that people say there is "no good music" out there. The problem I have encountered is that it is hidden away in the musical underground, a place where, I suppose, almost everything good about this country hides anymore.

Creative, poetic rock.......2002-01-15

Fruit Bats feed upon a country-rock americana folk, doing it in a stylistic fashion that is pleasingly unique. They use mandolins, banjos, marimbas and acoustic guitars coupled with super-rock sets and minimalistic country sounds that provide the listener with varied, distinctive sounds. Eric Johnson adds to the diversity with his poetic lyrics; the total CD creation draws one to want to listen to this album multiple times. I have yet to get tired of it. When I saw Fruit Bats perform, they we were pleasing, as well.

A Journey to find a Hidden Gem.......2001-12-14

The Fruit Bats take the listener on a journey that transports one through multi-layered cuts of CoRoFo (Country, Rock, Folk in an Alt. way). The Fruit Bats music emerges sounding as if it met its Dylanesque meets James Taylor and Mark Knopfler or the Beatles counterpart. The genius is it possesses multiple layers of meaning but you are only obligated to delve as deep as you choose on a given day. You still win. Listened to this while driving the car, with headset, with my friends and while sipping wine.

The music has a simple yet sophisticated feel. Songwriter Eric Johnson is skilled at massaging words. The Fruit Bats, some of the best musicians of this genre, meld a national geographic type of verbal visualizatiom with creative, deftly unique melodic mixes. Some pieces carry the day with Johnson doing instrumentation nearly all on his own. Most others almost give you the feeling of an orchestral sound that draws in the listener.

I love percussion. It is effective, yet understated percussion with pleasant surprises.

There is nothing formula about this CD and anyone who loves music will appreciate its honesty, inner depth, and fun time during bad times feeling.

Music Review: