Siamese Dream by Fruit Bats

I’ve liked the Fruit Bats for a long time. The band is essentially one person, Eric D. Johnson, and he’s been performing as Fruit Bats on and off for over two decades. Fruit Bats have released ten full-length albums in that time. Not one has been on the Bacon Top 31, despite my ongoing enjoyment of hearing his songs on the radio and almost buying tickets to see him perform numerous times. I have no good reason for this, but that’s ok because I’m rectifying the situation right here and now.

Siamese Dream is a Smashing Pumpkins album that rarely left my CD player in the fall and winter of 1993. Nearly third years old, I still play the album once every couple years, and I sing – loudly – if one of its songs comes on the radio while I’m driving around. So you can imagine my sheer joy when I learned that Fruit Bats had produced a cover of the entire album in 2020.

With instrumentation that leans towards the quieter folk rock side of the indie spectrum, Johnson’s voice lands somewhere between Billy Corgan and James Mercer – in the higher registers. (Johnson even played with The Shins from 2006-2011). Thankfully, his voice is not as mumbly as Mercer’s or as nasal-y as Corgan’s. Nor is his cover of Siamese Dream a note-for-note remake. But the same chord progressions are there, as well as the same Gen X angst. This is a mostly faithful rendition, and if the original has a special place in your heart, then this album will slot in right next to it.

Fruit Bats recorded the album in 2020 as a collaboration with Turntable Kitchen. “Turntable Kitchen is a place to come home to, travel with and turn up the volume on” says their website. They have three different vinyl subscriptions you can join; Sounds Delicious is the one dedicated solely to full-album covers. Subscribers got to hear Siamese Dream last year (and is sold out now). It only hit the streaming services this year. I’m keeping an eye on the site for future stellar covers, and I’ll be sure to mention them on the Top 31 when they do appear!

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26. NINE by Sault
27. Observatory by Aeon Station
28. The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania by Damien Jurado
29. A Beginner’s Mind by Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine
30. Where the End Begins by Knathan Ryan
31. Private Space by Durand Jones & The Indications

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Full Album
All albums in their entirety.

Radio Station
A single song selection pulled from each album.

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