Over the last decade Fruit Bats have amassed, unobtrusively and understatedly, a back catalogue of which most artists could be proud. The band is the endeavour of its only permanent member, Eric D. Johnson, who has supplemented his role at the helm with guest stints in groups including Vetiver and The Shins. New album Tripper is imbued with the insistently tuneful indie craft characteristic of these associates but it is also a darker and distinctive record, with less emphasis on Johnson’s supporting cast than 2009′s The Ruminant Band. Johnson is still ruminating, starting with a tale inspired by twelve hours’ travelling with Tony, a tramp, ten years ago. It was right at the start of Johnson’s Fruit Bats journey and his re-imagining of a voyage with the vagrant (“best friend and worst enemy”) opens album number five.

Tripper embraces a ghostly, restrained melancholia of sorts, matched with a mishmash of breakaway nostalgia. Bereft of the strum-along sing-along, the songwriting here is robust and still deft enough to make this shimmer in true Johnson fashion but there’s an unsettled tone, too. His vibrant falsetto has found a new strength and edginess, rendering the vocals rawer and more of a focal point than before, if sometimes slurred. Even so, there is a soft sadness in the nostalgic sound; ‘So Long’ typifying this with retro keys and a subtly ardent refrain. ‘The Banishment Song’ morphs from a delicate, intricate little introduction into an engrossingly sparse and repetitive minor key dressing-down dirge, starkly simple and ending with the thought “We’re never ever ever coming back”. Fruit Bats’ dexterity in knitting textures and phases is impressive but outstripped by an instinct for gently repetitive motifs that refresh the songs with every echo.

The suggestion of pushing off and moving on permeates Tripper, which itself departs from previous albums with the inclusion of a cover. This gorgeous, gentle and thoughtful recording of the late Diane Izzo’s ‘Wild Honey’ is placed at the end of a suite of segues, following the unusual instrumental ‘The Fen’ (basically a handful of long synth chords, sustained with glimmering intensity and little lilting swirls) and fading away like a hot wind. “I’m the only one who ever believed in you”, Johnson sings endearingly on ‘You’re Too Weird’. These are the regretful reminiscences and backward glances that mark out the sort of road trip that ends up, one route or another, very much back where it began.

Indeed, every Fruit Bats record can boast a few key features, which are happily in evidence again. An extra-fulfilling final song, for example – ‘Picture of a Bird’ more than fitting the bill, possessed as it is of both trundle and bounce. This alternate cruising and coursing is another habit upheld here, as is the effortlessly assured, natural charm. Johnson is, generally speaking, a master of the melodic – be it lolling or brisk – and has a knack of catching a tune to fit the mood, whatever the mood. Like a portrait painting where the eyes follow you, it’s difficult not to be drawn in, irresistible even.

Fruit Bats’ fifth is another hugely agreeable and dependably laudable album, while Pernice Brother Thom Monahan’s production leaves the listener with a hazy sense of tunes well-worked. Even though the optimism of its predecessor is spent and its escapism transmuted to wanderlust, this stripped-down sound remains very involving and the gloaming is still flecked with sunlit strumming: all in all, another glinting jewel in Johnson’s indie-folk crown that just occasionally catches the sun.