Liam’s self-titled release is something of a retrospective, a young artist looking back on a jam-packed first few years of touring, recording, and developing. The music here – mostly solo acoustic guitar – is akin to the wild folk art of the rugs of the “Gagetown Hookers” pictured on the cover (and in the “scandalous” gatefold) – a kind of crude-sophisticated hybrid perfectly captured in a series of front-porch, no-overdubs recordings. Side A’s suite of fingerstyle steel string numbers includes the spare “Working Nights” and the winsome “Gagetown Hookers,” both of which capture Liam’s considerable chops while retaining enough sharp edges to resonate with real visceral force. There’s also a driving duet with Noah Codega’s fiddle on Jack Rose’s “Flirting with the Undertaker,” slyly taking on the “American Primitive” tradition via a song that Jack more or less lifted wholesale from a previous generation of ramblers, paying it forward in rollicking style. On Side B, Liam stretches out with a revisit of “Nobody’s Down With The Boogie Anymore,” re-recorded from his pre-vinyl demo recordings, a brief and sweet duo with inspiration Glenn Jones, and the long and languorous “Blues for the West Bank,” which captures its titular subject matter perfectly via a sad and sweeping workout on Weisenborn-style lap steel. Gatefold jacket, cut by Golden, pressed in Chicago by Smashed.