How does one go about making music not usually understood as “punk” sound like punk? How best to apply the DIY ethos, the construction by destruction, of punk art to other genres? How can the guide-fires that have been lit by past iconoclasts of the underground illuminate explorations in different styles?
Maine-based fingerstyle guitarist Liam Grant provides his answers to these questions in the form of his sophomore LP, Prodigal Son, a collection of anti-tradition-traditional-style music — American Primitive with a capital A and P through a dirtied lens — kindly and perhaps counter-intuitively dedicated to his parents.
The opening track, “Palmyra,” starts with a gong-like bang on the open strings of…