by Dave Franklin

Created on: January 17, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

So whose heard of a Celtic progressive folk rock concept album? Surely I made that up? You all know that I have a fairly odd taste in music but the aforementioned category must be a figment of my imagination. Hardcore country jazz or ambient classical death metal is probably more believable. But I kid you not, whilst the later two are the products of my alcohol addled imagination, the former neatly sums up a band called Horslips and their 1976 album "The Book of Invasions." Seen by many as a return to their earlier sound, like their second album, "The Tain," it is based on stories that come from Irish mythology. The original Book of Invasions is a semi-mythical record of the subsequent races that controlled ancient Ireland. The album is subtitled "A Celtic Symphony" and that neatly sums up the nature of the album. It is a concept album in that it tells a story through the albums entirety, even though there are many individual songs contained on it. It can also be thought of as a soundtrack to a long lost place in time, modern musicians revelling in their own rich traditions.

With this, their seventh album, the band, now a well-established part of the rock music scene, at least in Europe anyway, took the characters and events of these legends and wove a mix of original and traditional music around it to create an album that was Irish to the core. Horslips had formed in 1970 and comprised Barry Devlin (bass/vocals) John Fean (lead guitar/vocals), Eamonn Carr (drums/vocals), Charles O'Connor (violin), and Jim Lockhart (flute/violin/keyboards). Their original singer Declan Sinnott was later to turn up in Irish folk super group Moving Hearts. For a comparison it is easy to equate Horslips to Jethro Tull who were working along a similar folk-progressive rock axis around the same time. The Englishness that is cerebrated on the Tull albums "Songs From The Wood" and "Heavy Horses" is a direct parallel of what their opposite number was doing exploring their own cultural heritage across the Irish Sea. But also like Tull, their progressive nature meant that they accessed a whole range of influences from all genres of music over the years retaining a freshness and fluid originality from one album to the next. Here they are doing the type of music that made them famous in the first place and whilst many have tried to imitate their style in the years since, The Book of Invasions remains a never bettered slice of Celtic rock.
The album's divided onto three sections or strains.

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