Liam Grant - Prodigal Son LP

While not necessarily in vogue at this moment, it feels like there’s a never ending stream of records flowing from the post-American Primitivist/New Weird American well that can often feel like self-indulgent efforts of acoustic guitar shredding. Lemme tell you, Liam Grant’s latest is not that.

Across Prodigal Son, it’s clear that Grant explores a more abstract and subtle tradition, with a willingness to sit with and tease out a droning fingerpicking passage before breaking out into a more intense passage of playing or explore in-the-red-recording techniques that make acoustic lap steels sound like something on an Earth record with a patience and openness to atmosphere and chance largely created by on-the-fly tape recording that shredders-for-shredders sake simply do not possess. 

One for listeners that want to connect the dots from Fahey or Jack Rose to Bruce Langhorne’s Hired Hand OST or Loren Connors (who Grant covers here).

-Mitch