On August 9, 2024, Merge Records will release A Decoration, a six-song collaboration between Mackenzie Scott of TORRES and Eric D. Johnson of Fruit Bats. The EP will be released digitally and on limited-edition vinyl that will be initially available for purchase during the Merge 35 festival this July. Today, Scott and Johnson share the first single from A Decoration, “Married for Love"—listen to the song wherever you stream music!

Though A Decoration’s bold, boundary-pushing melding together of TORRES and Fruit Bats suggests years of conversation and collaboration between Scott and Johnson, Merge 35 represents the first time the artists will meet face-to-face. Initiated at the suggestion of Merge label co-founder Mac McCaughan, the two quickly shared ideas and began building songs without so much as FaceTiming each other. “The whole recording process wound up being done totally remotely with each of us on our respective coasts,” Johnson explains. “It was like assembling a cross-continental jigsaw puzzle in the ether.”

“Married for Love” began as a synth-heavy TORRES demo. “The recording we’re releasing is synthy, but the demo was darker and had no acoustic instruments on it,” Scott recalls. “I sent it to him and he turned it into what he described as a Quaker chant. He made it softer and added these beautiful harmonies, something you could almost imagine hearing in a church as opposed to the nightclubby vibe I had going.”

In working together, Scott and Johnson neither changed TORRES or Fruit Bats at their core to suit their collaborator’s ideas, nor did they merely look for places in each other’s music where they could fit themselves in. A Decoration is something else entirely, something new and vibrant and vital to the catalogs of two songwriters whose most recent albums, Fruit Bats’ A River Running to Your Heart and TORRES’ What an enormous room, found them at the peak of their creative powers, at a perfect moment to begin a new conversation through song.

“Music really is its own language,” Scott says. “I’ve always believed that the best music is something that doesn’t need to be explained or discussed at all—you either get it or you don’t. With Eric, in terms of the musical language that was spoken, we didn’t have to talk that much at all; we just got what the other person was doing, which transcends personalities or conversation altogether.”

TORRES and Fruit Bats are both slated to kick off tours in July, with their paths intersecting on July 25 and 26, first at Merge 35 then at The Outpost in Asheville, NC. Tickets for all tour dates, including Fruit Bats’ My Sweet Midwest festival in Chicago, are on sale now. All dates can be found below this full statement from Eric D. Johnson on A Decoration:

I’ve been a fan of the music of TORRES for a long time, so when Mac suggested it to me, I jumped at the chance. The whole recording process wound up being done totally remotely with each of us on our respective coasts—it was like assembling a cross-continental jigsaw puzzle in the ether.

Mackenzie and I worked on this in a breezy way where all ideas and sounds were fair game. We each brought a few sketches into the initial ideas pile and treated them in a way like we were doing remixes of each other's songs. There were no wrong answers. The back and forth continued until the music was in a totally different place from where it began.

Sometimes when you do collaborative projects, it ends up just sounding like an amalgam of the two artists. This process assured that the final EP kinda sounds like nothing either of us has ever done—it’s a collection of wishful love chants, patiently unfolding fuzzy loops, danceable ambience, and pleas to the universe.

Fruit Bats on tour:
Jul 17 Boulder, CO – The Fox Theatre [SOLD OUT]
Jul 18 Morrison, CO – Red Rocks Amphitheater (w/ Dr. Dog) [SOLD OUT]
Jul 19 Kansas City, MO – Lemonade Park
Jul 20 St. Louis, MO – Big Top Open Air
Jul 21 Indianapolis, IN – Hi-Fi Annex
Jul 23 Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
Jul 24 New York, NY – Racket
Jul 25 Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle (Merge 35)
Jul 26 Asheville, NC – The Outpost w/TORRES
Jul 27 Lexington, KY – The Burl (Outdoors)
Jul 28 Pelham, TN – The Caverns
Sep 11 Westerly, RI – United Theatre
Sep 12 Portland, ME – Portland House of Music and Events [SOLD OUT]
Sep 13 South Burlington, VT – Higher Ground
Sep 14 Stone Ridge, NY – Meadowlark
Sep 20 Stockholm, SE – Maxim (solo)
Oct 18–19 Chicago, IL – My Sweet Midwest

TORRES on tour:
Jul 18 Bloomington, IN – Switchyard Park
Jul 19 Cincinnati, OH – The Woodward Theater
Jul 20 Louisville, KY – Zanzabar
Jul 23 Richmond, VA – Richmond Music Hall at Capital Ale House
Jul 25 Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle (Merge 35)
Jul 26 Asheville, NC – The Outpost w/ Fruit Bats
Jul 27 Macon, GA – Bragg Jam