Acoustic guitar badass and prolific tourer Liam Grant’s follow-up to the excellent Amoskeag and debut for VHF comes in like a thunderstorm, with distorted fingerpicked guitar notes hitting the speakers in a barrage of metal and wood. For the record though, and as an excuse to throw in a sweary first-paragraph quote, there are no electronics here. Says Liam: “It’s all acoustic guitar but fucking blasted to tape. The distortion on a few tracks is pretty heavy, the opener was just done on a Tascam four track but it’s been mistaken for electric lap steel.” So there you have it, and the acoustic lapsteel on opener Palmyra is actually Jack Rose’s old Weissenborn guitar, which Liam borrowed from Glenn Jones and fell in love with. It seems appropriate, considering Jack’s significant VHF contributions.
Two pieces around thirteen minutes in length make up the core of the album, starting with twelve string song Salmon Tails up the River, an intricately picked epic that shifts its tempo and pacing as the song develops, with heavy strumming in places providing drama and tension. The final four minutes in particular, which must be the salmon hitting the rapids, are particularly thrilling. Needless to say, the song also mesmerises in a live setting.
The music is somewhat calmer at the beginning of the second extended piece, Insult to Injury, with the guitar’s notes chiming with some piano character and a less distorted sound. Another twelve-string piece, this one slows the music and flips the drama of Salmon Tails, instead giving us beauty, especially across the higher strings. The two songs played so differently on the same instrument, work very well together, with Salmon Tails ending the first side and Insult beginning side B, lending the sound a real sense of adventure and variety.
A Moment at the Door is a reworking of a Loren Connors song, with Liam playing it slowly, letting each hammer-on or string bend decay in time. The cyclical nature of the piece gives it a soothing feel coupled with a sense of ambiguity. It is a beautiful song that leads nicely into closer Old Country Rock, a lighter piece in a more traditional ragtime style, with Trevor McKenzie and Grayson McGuire accompanying on fiddle and banjo. This one feels like a nod to Liam’s touring sound when he travels as a trio, and the Old-time music is as welcome as a starry sky.
Liam is really flexing on this record. He admitted to me that he was pleased with the outcome and said the ideas had been simmering for some time, and it shows in the playing, which is confident and powerful. The recording style of hitting it to tape gives the music plenty of drama and a point of difference to most acoustic instrumental albums. VHF calls Prodigal Son a ‘raucous record’, and you can see why. It’s a celebration of the power and dexterity of the acoustic guitar from one of the current leading lights, and it totally rocks.
Prodigal Son (21st February 2025) VHF Records (VHF 166)
Bandcamp: Digital/Vinyl: https://vhfrecords.bandcamp.com/album/prodigal-son
VHF (Vinyl): https://www.vhfrecords.com/catalog/liam-grant-vhf166-lp