The imagery New Mexico banjoist Johnny Bell throws up on his first fully composed solo banjo album, Mountain States, is often along the lines of slow-moving, sun-scorched skylines, or a scorpion in a desert with its tail quivering. There is an element of unease and an underlying gravity running through this music that is a far cry from a more ambient style of country banjo music, like that of Andrew Tuttle’s Fleeting Adventure, for example; something also reflected in the album artwork in which Daniel McCoy Jr. (Muscogee Creek/Potawatomi) renders New Mexico’s Diablo Canyon in surreal, psychedelic colour, a landscape at once familiar and alien.
A chunk of this is down to co-producer Andrew Weathers’ direction and decision to mic…