Robert Calvert

As ideas for concept albums go, Robert Calvert's was particularly clever -- an epic themed around the Vikings conquest of America. Of course, nowadays academic doubts surrounding who reached the Americas first have been put to rest, but back in 1975, many were still convinced of Leif Ericcson's claims. However, Calvert didn't just take the Norse sagas at their word, he took them one step further, imagining that Ericcson's colony had not just survived but flourished, and rewriting American myths through a Viking prism. And so we sail on the hard rock "Ship of Fools" into the unknown, finally washing up at "The Lay of the Surfers," where the Vikings immediately set off on a celebratory pillage. Well these "Bar Bar Barbarians" lived to rape and plunder, and they do so here in hilarious Beach Boys style. They then go on to chant of their valor on the martial "Voyaging to Vinland" and recite their epic creation myths on the spoken word "The Making of Midgard." With "Brave New World," Calvert shifts from Viking sagas to American's own myth of a beautiful land destined for its new inhabitants. However, the Vikings somehow end up repeating all the Angle-Saxons mistakes and excesses, from the "Moonshine in the Mountains" to the Hollywood Hills that beckon the seasick and suffering Viking stuck on the other side of the Atlantic, and onto a gangster sopped, Prohibition-era Chicago. However, "Storm Chant of the Skraelings" warns of the world's eventual fate, and the album ends, aptly enough, with the coming of "Ragna Rock," the Viking apocalypse. Not content with toying with U.S. history, Calvert plays with American musical styles to great effect across the set, incorporating a hillbilly hoedown, country-rock, laid-back boogie-blues, Native-American chanting and rhythms, and with "Volstead o Vodeo Do" an inspired hybrid of proto-jazz and reggae. An awesome album featuring a cast of Calvert cohorts, and brilliantly produced by Brian Eno, Lucky Leif and the Longships was an inspired set. [The reissue adds two wildly out of place bonus tracks, previously available only a rare flexidisc and a limited-edition CD-single.] ~ Jo-Ann Greene, All Music Guide