Halloween is great and all but when a much-loved band escapes the perilous clutches of “hiatus” only then is it truly a time to celebrate. Friday night, the Turf Club hosted the Fruit Bats’ glorious return to the Twin Cities. If you can trust my cobwebbed memory, I believe the last time they were in town was 2011 in the mainroom – I’m still kicking myself for not going. Band leader Eric D. Johnson disbanded the group in 2013 after 13 years, citing an interest in solo work (under the moniker EDJ) and other musical projects. As he explained in a hand-written letter posted to Instagram:

“…after a couple of years of doing this solo EDJ thing and having to have (Fruit Bats) in parentheses after my name everywhere I go, I’ve decided to drop the parentheses and start doing Fruit Bats again full steam ahead.

I missed having a band behind me, I missed my old songs, and I’ve come to hate parentheses. Who knew?”

Fans who arrived early to the show got to enjoy two fantastic openers: Paul Spring and Joan Shelley. Spring, originally hailing from St. Cloud, but currently based in Minneapolis, was accompanied by Charlie on upright bass and the two played a great folky set consisting of many tracks off of Spring’s newly released album Towards a Center (produced by Dap-Kings drummer Homer Steinweiss – how cool is that?)

Louisville native Joan Shelley came on next to pierce all of our hearts with her haunting Appalachian-inspired meditations and gorgeous voice reminiscent of Joni Mitchell and Gillian Welch. Her recent offering, Over and Even, came out in September and has already cast its spell over much of the music world. For the song “Not Over By Half,” Johnson came out to duet with Shelley and, let me tell ya, those two made some intoxicating harmonies together – like there should be some kind of surgeon general’s warning on these kinds of performances: Music May Cause Lightheadedness and Swooning.

But Johnson has always had that kind of effect on me ever since I heard Fruit Bats’ second album 2003’s Mouthfuls for the first time. Being able to immerse myself in what the band has jokingly referred to as “rustic pop” was such a thrill (I’m partial to “bootgazer,” myself). Although Fruit Bats has a revolving line-up, the current live band is pretty stellar: Kevin Barker on guitar, David Dawda on bass, drummer Brian Kantor and Garth Klippert working the keys (side note: Klippert is also in a band called Old Light which you should look up.)

The set featured lots of cuts from the last two Fruit Bats records 2009’s The Ruminant Band (“Primitive Man,” “Feather Bed”) and 2011’s Tripper (“So Long,” “You’re Too Weird”) as well as some brand-spankin’ new songs from the next record, to be released sometime next year. Johnson’s honeyed voice was perfect, rivaled only by the dreamy strum of Barker’s guitar and gentle whirr of Klippert’s keyboards. Folk-pop gems like fan-favorite “When You Love Somebody” (from Mouthfuls) saw many people singing the famously quirky lyric, “When you love somebody and bite your tongue all you get is a mouthful of blood.”

Blood, bats, love and folk – I couldn’t have asked for a better precursor to Halloween.