Johnny Bell - Mountain States
Released: May 7 In his follow-up from 2024’s Field Trips , Johnny Bell takes what he began with in his experimentations with the banjo and makes them front and center. Compared to his previous work, Mountain States fr more focused on the banjo and really pushing what can be created with it. Of course, being a banjo, there are those folk/western and even a very small touch of blues vibes. But Bell takes those expectations and tendencies and inverts them into something a bit more melancholic and even a bit epic. Using an idiosyncratic variation of the clawhammer style, Bell creates these riffs and rhythms that feel much larger than they are. The mood overall feels dark but also somehow hopeful as well. A lot of this tension comes in throughout the album as each song has its own balance of moods. In “Old Blood,” there is an overwhelming feeling of tension, like a dark cloud hanging over the whole track as it threatens to rain but only gives fierce gusts of wind. But the followi...
