Upon release,
English Primitive I received very positive reviews. In
Mojo, Martin Aston wrote "For his first — terrific — solo album, David Lance Callahan has gone against type... The singer locates a common ground between
trad British folk and
Saharan blues, with an occasional injection of
Eastern strings. Seven frequently lengthy
drone-based ballads demand more of Callahan's vibrant, stark voice than before, and not known for guitar-playing until now, his snaking, thrumming patterns suit the earthy mood. Lyrically,
English Primitive I is an uncanny mixture too. Between two
class-war tracts — the sarky "Born of the Welfare State Was I" and a sombre "Always" — feverish visions of outliers abound, such as the Goatman ("spriggan eight-foot tall") and the feral outcast "Foxboy", but also "One Rainy September"'s heartbreaking parent/child breakdown and a slyly romantic "She's the King of My Life"." Reviewing
English Primitive I for
Into Creative, Grant McPhee enthused further over the "dark, English folk influences", adding "this album is no throwback or hipster pastiche... If
Thurston Moore had joined
Steeleye Span along with
Martin Carthy, and if perhaps
John Coltrane was there to help out a little, you'd get some idea of where this album takes you — blistering freak-out guitar that dives in and out of the beautiful melodies... But there is also some achingly sad minimalism too, often with just a deceptively simple guitar tone and voice that clearly has studied the form well. Drones play an important part in this record too which is another welcome addition and it's very pleasing to hear a little hint of
Nico's phenomenal
Marble Index... Beautiful is a word that accurately describes much of the music on this album but with a qualifier that it is a particular form of beauty reserved for those who find beauty in shadowy moonlit glades, swamps lit with corpse-lights, ghostly hellhounds on lonely roads and music filled with dark drones, discord and bleakness." Writing for
Backseat Mafia, Chris Sawle described the album as "a deep, complex excursion into the raga-folk form – taking as a sonic touchstone a certain brand of exploratory British psychedelic folk at its height from '68 to '72, and bending it to a new and more earthbound, socially documentarian thrust", suggesting that "we're the English primitives whose lives he seeks to recount, bringing us seven tales of the less cushy life couched in a mutant Eastern scales-meets-post-punk fire... The punk-refracted folk has a slow-burn, contemporary bone-chill and quiet desperation last seen over in Manchester at former labelmates
King of the Slums." Identifying the album as "both small- and big-P political (and if you follow Callahan anywhere on socials, you'll know the
post-war settlement espoused in this song is absolutely a hill he would die on — and rightly so)", Sawles warns "you're gonna have to work at it a little; no puppy of a record, eager to please, this. You can sense immediately how much more there is to be gained from repeat listening and how much yet to unfold. Other killer lines reaching out; other crescendos catching you with their amassed energy. It's the sort of record that one day ought to pitch up on social history syllabuses as a true reflection of a broiling, fracturing period in which it looks likely the humble populace may come off worst... What a time to be alive. Be glad that David can see clearly and crystallise it for us." John Robb, writing in
Louder than War, states that "David Callahan has created something truly special — a drone masterpiece... a captivating and haunting work. The enthralling and captivating album somehow joins the dots between the terror at the heart of old English folk, the landscape drones of West African
Gnawa and desert blues, a post-punk template,
John Cale drones of the
Velvets and the deep dark resonance of a very English psychedelia and even hints of the
Revolver-era
Beatles tinged with the dread
LSD... these are songs that capture the discontent of these times in hypnotic scenarios that are like all the best parts of psychedelia and medieval folk combined into an unholy whole... Lyrically brilliant, it's a stark political snapshot that deals with the darkness of the Covid era better than most any other release of the moment. A future time capsule of these times steeped in a music that lasts forever. I beg and implore you to wallow in its genius – this is no normal release but almost the culmination of a lifetime on the creative fringes poetically observing the madness." Reviewing the album in
Penny Black Music, Kimberley Bright wrote "David Lance Callahan may be an anti-hero but
English Primitive I proves he is a national treasure... This is a diverse, weighty, and sometimes perplexing — in a good way — album... He utilizes raga, traditional English folk, first generation psychedelic wyrd folk, punk, West African Gnawa, and more exotic-sounding scales than anyone this side of
prog rock. There is a persistent droning pedal note in the background throughout that has an unsettling effect. Callahan has been described as a social documentarian, and that description certainly fits this material. "Born of the Welfare State" might someday be covered by
Billy Bragg to celebrate the original post-war ideal compassionate society — the NHS, state schools, housing, healthy food, and subsidized job training — in contrast to the attacks on these institutions today... "Goatman", "Foxboy" and "She Passes Through the Night" are long and involved, sounding like dark pre-
New Age pagan epics... It was a long time coming, but
English Primitive I may well be one of those classic, genre-defying albums that will be looked back on as being more influential than anyone suspected it would." ==Track listing==