The lockdown album has become something of a cliche, usually meaning a depressed, brooding affair. This fifth album from Australian banjo player-cum-sonic wizard Andrew Tuttle is reflective but never depressed – indeed, he describes it as “a reverse doomscroll” – and it brims with the sense of release and joy that comes from the tiniest escape from confinement.
Entirely instrumental, it’s essentially a soundscape driven and shaped by Tuttle’s artful, melodic banjo, but set amid a widescreen wash of electronica, guitar, violin and more. Opener Overnight’s a Weekend is almost thunderous, an ominous soundtrack looking for a film. With some wonderful pedal steel parts from Nashville innovators Luke Schneider and Chuck Johnson (the latter also mixed the album), much of Fleeting Adventure conjures up images of a Tennessee prairie, though it’s as much the shimmering vastness of Australia’s outback that’s being evoked on cuts such as Freeway Flex.
