Once again, lots of Santa Barbara music-lovers were AWOL on Sunday when the Fruit Bats and Parson Red Heads put on one of the best shows Santa Barbara has seen this year (saying much) courtesy of Club Mercy and the New Noise Festival.  As anticipated, the Fruit Bats brought their high-energy, pop-melodic phantasmagoria to Soho, and the appreciative (albeit diminutive) crowd went batty.  Those in doubt before the show are now doubtless.  The Fruit Bats are one of America’s best live bands and Chicago-based songwriter/leader, Eric Johnson, continues to add to his burgeoning song-chest as one of America’s premier new-generation singer-songwriters (along with Taylor Goldsmith from Dawes, Jim James, the National boys, Conor Oberst and a few select others).

You have simply got to catch this band live.  Passion and precision rarely coincide, but Eric Johnson and the Fruit Bats provide exactly that.  At Soho there were pop stars converging.  The first part of the band’s set consisted mostly of songs off of their worthy new album, “Tripper” (more on this new concept album another time), including You’re Too Weird, Tony The Tripper, Tangie and Ray, and Heart Like an Orange. Johnson then alerted the crowd that the remaining songs would be “older and progressively older,” and the remaining set consisted of pop-gems predominantly from their last album, the fantastic ’70s-influenced, “The Ruminant Band” and and from “Spelled in Bones.” Highlights included Lives of Crime, (the Marshall Tucker Band-sounding) Feather Bed, (preposterously jaunty) Being on Our Own, Legs of Bees, Primitive Man, When You Love Somebody (of course; check the Soho video below), and a stunningly beautiful solo rendition by Johnson of Singing Joy To The World.  The band closed out the night with a ridiculously rousing rendition of The Ruminant Band (with some more Marshall Tucker/Allmans guitar bits).

The bottom line is that when you combine Johnson’s pop-hooky songwriting, sweet high-register voice and friendly Midwestern-mien, with the superb playing and harmony vocals of the other Bats, you can’t help but be won over.  Our faces ached from smiling after the show.

Fortunately for the slackers that missed the show, the good folks at NYCtaper recorded the Fruit Bats’ very-similar recent set at the Bowery, and you can listen/download the set HERE (if you do nothing else check out Johnson’s solo version of Singing Joy to the World). As usual, the quality by Nyctaper is high and they had this to say about the particulars: “I recorded this set with a soundboard feed provided by the Fruit Bats’ sound engineer, together with DPA microphones.   The results are, as usual with Bowery, excellent.  Enjoy!”  We did!

And below check out the band performing  When You Love Somebody at Soho (thanks to Oulalie), then My Unusual Friend and Johnson’s solo (acoustic guitar as opposed to the shimmering, reverbified electric at Soho) Singing Joy to the World, and finally, the closer: The Ruminant Band:

And then just for fun, check out Johnson channeling Neil on Young’s Revolution Blues below.

As a side note, after the show Eric Johnson hailed Club Mercy as his “favorite promoter in all of America” and commended them for the good care given to the bands.  And we (Santa Barbara and the ever-expanding beyond), are the beneficiaries.  Bravo!

And while we’re at it, make sure you support the bands out on tour and hit the merch tables as hard as you can.  Look at the sort of eye-and-ear candy you can pick up.  Well done Fruit Bats!

Opening up for the Fruit Bats were the rousing Parson Red Heads, touring in support of their new album, “Yearling.”  Yearling was produced and engineered by seminal North Carolina indie dudes, Chris Stamey and Mitch Easter (REM, etc.), respectively, and by sometimes member and producer, Raymond Richards.

The Parson Red Heads themselves are leader, Evan Way, sweet-faced redhead (and wife of Evan) Brette Marie Way on drums and vocals, tall Sam Fowles on guitar and vocals, and Charlie Hester on bass and vocals.  Visually they’re three hirsute dudes and one girl-next-door redhead gal (killing on drums).  They have a decided folk-rock sound, on several occasions directly channeling the jangle of The Byrds, albeit updated.  Ultimately their songs and breathtaking harmonizing won the crowd over.  Highlights of their set were the beauteous barbershop-quartet-esque rendering of the Beach Boys’ Surfer Girl (as pictured above and a snippet of which can be heard below) and the two closing songs (both off the new album), the rocking Kids Hanging Out and Burning Up the Sky.

Check out below a snippet of their cover of Surfer Girl at Soho (again courtesy of Oulalie), and then their live performance of new song highlight, Burning Up the Sky: