Sitting on Sub Pop since the label’s early-oughts soft-rock land grab (think Postal Service, the Shins, Iron & Wine), Eric Johnson’s Fruit Bats have chilled in those long shadows since 2002’s Mouthfuls. Part of the reason of late is Johnson’s own doing; the outfit has been dormant since 2005’s breezy Laurel Canyon paean Spelled in Bones. Johnson himself has been plenty busy, though, between becoming the first non-Albuquerquean to play with Mercer & co., and sitting in with American Beauty acolytes and fellow Sup Popians Vetiver. As for the latest release: The word “ruminant” applies to cows making cud as well as brains making decisions, and this effort, the one he’s had the most time to chew on, emerges unsurprisingly as the fullest-sounding, and (by a hair over Bones) the best thing he’s done yet.

Listen to any of Johnson’s albums for more than a track or two, and you get the sense that he’s not really one for drastic change; instead, he’s capable of flexing within the rustic confines of his chosen vibe. His ear for detail here is sharper than ever: The bittersweet and nostalgic “Singing Joy to the World” bookends an imaginary relationship between Three Dog Night’s titular tune sung at a fairground performance and a girl dancing to Prince’s “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” at a bar. But he’s able to bliss out, too-- “Flamingo” is post-tweaked with crackle and echo to sound like a Sun Records doo-wop pastiche, Johnson closing the record in giddy falsetto: “Everything is gonna be just fine.”

That’s a nice way to describe Ruminant, and Johnson’s work more generally: “just fine.” That’s not damnation via faint praise-- the record is “fine,” as in an indication of precision and elegance. As always, Johnson’s gift for grab is subtle but effective. In a 2005 interview with Popmatters, he expressed a fondness for Led Zeppelin III, and though it took a while, sure enough, subtle variations on the forceful front-porch strum, stout drums of the borderline jammy “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp” underscores opener “Primitive Man”, followed by the title track, which while namedropping a “blue-eyed Merle”, packs enough pristine overdubs to even suggest II’s “Ramble On” or box set bonus “Hey Hey What Can I Do”. The tossed-off saloon stomper “The Hobo Girl”: yup, Physical Graffiti’s “Boogie With Stu”.

Johnson also finds a way to make AM Gold fresh again by filtering his own spirit through a cast of characters. One offers roadside proverbs (”You’ll always eat bread if you always have seeds to sow”), another relates a bluesy origin myth built on bringing cold weather wherever he travels, and another loves hearing about your dreams when he wakes up. For what it’s worth, the album fits exceedingly well between Wilco (The Album) and Richard Swift’s The Atlantic Ocean: “My Unusual Friend” fits breezy guitars over a staccato piano rhythm, and “Being on Our Own” is sympathetic country-pop. All this means that Fruit Bats, like their contemporaries, could unfortunately be passed over due to sheer familiarity. That’d be a shame, because The Ruminant Band only gets more rewarding as it settles in.