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 following track, “Monsoon Sunset,” there is that more hopeful and upbeat tone about it, as if it finally rained a very welcome rain. It still has that slight hint of darkness or desperation, but these are only the faintest of notes. “Caldera Repose,” which immediately follows, brings some of this tension without so much of the dark notes. Just a briskly-paced piece that evokes scenes of a chase or climactic moment. 

While the banjo is the primary focus here, there are some interesting choices of accompaniments that add to the epic scenes driven by the banjo. Distorted droning guitars, drones made from a slow playing of the fiddle, and synth textures that add to the droning aspects of the guitars and the clawhammer banjo. It amplifies the otherworldly feeling the banjo evokes in its strummed rhythms, making what is normally quite natural into something that feels more natural. It’s a masterful blend of these elements and it’s quite an original approach that keeps true to the bluegrass roots of the banjo style while also sounding like something entirely new.