After at least a dozen listens, I have to confess that I still have no idea what Spelled In Bones actually sounds like.

Nasty, huh?

Therein lies the problem.  Fruit Bats are clearly very talented musicians (each member plays 10,000 different instruments) but don’t really have an identifiable “sound” – unless, of course, their “sound” is “no sound”. 

They do come close on occasion, such as on the pretty pop of “Canyon Girl”, but the bulk these songs are delivered with a complacency that it’s too easy to get distracted. “Born In The 70’s”, for example, suffers from a misguided falsetto that sounds like an attempt to either make fun of the Bee Gees or pay tribute to them (hey, it could really go either way on this tune) and you end up not really being interested anyway.  The same can be said of “The Wind That Blew My Heart Away” and the title track, slices of folk-pop that make no commitment to either folk or pop.

With some tweaking (drums would be nice), there could be something more to Fruit Bats.  But if they continue as on Spelled In Bones, then there are just too many reasons to listen to something else instead.