I must confess that when I read the press release for this album I was highly intrigued so downloaded it, but I never expected it to be so enjoyable and a whole load of fun. During the pandemic Robin had decided to go back to Harvard to complete his degree which he had started previously (when he graduated in 2021, he set the world record for longest ever gap, 50 years), and he felt inspired by a class he took on Ancient Greek History. He decided to take poetry from Ancient Greece between 700 and 400 BC and turn them into modern songs with the help of friends such as Tom Paxton, Eric Andersen, Livingston and Kate Taylor, Matt Nakoa, Robin Lane, 2-time Tony winning actor James Naughton and his gifted children Keira and Greg, plus Carolyn Hester.
The album title comes from Archilochus, the Bob Dylan of the 7th Century B.C., a warrior-poet so irreverent he was “Banned in Sparta.” James Naughton sings the song “Archilochus Re-Deemed (I Am a Servant of the Lord God of War).” Kate Taylor performs “Telesilla’s On the Wall,” from the female poet Telesilla, who led her fellow women warriors to victory against those same renowned Spartans. Tom Paxton is well into his eighties, but he sounds as if he is really enjoying singing “Shake your Hair (You Thracian Filly)”, and the album is a wonderful introduction to great singer songwriters, so much so that one has difficulty remembering that much of the source material (albeit translated into modern vocabulary) is well over 2000 years old. I came to this album expecting a curiosity and left it having really enjoyed a wonderful set of performances. This is an album which sounds as if it should have been released in the Seventies, and I wonder if we will see a Broadway show of this at some point as it has a certain amount of musical theatre here as well. Well worth investigating.
Rating: 9/10
Links:
https://robinbatteau.com/