Cover art by Lars Bigum Kvernberg
Most of us must have core memories of grand plans we made with our best buds in school. To grow up and all be cops or robbers or sports stars or spies or treasure hunters. Or to all be so rich and travel the world together or live in some exotic place on a mountain with pet lions and private rockets and a summer home on Mars. Or to be famous actors on a TV show together. Or to be in a rock and roll band. And most of us realized exactly zero of those inspired visions. That’s no knock on any of us. We’re human, after all, and were children then. Fickle. Fallible. Feckless, some of us. But it is a pretty strong reminder that when people do realize a childhood dream, especially together with the kids who shared that dream, it is special indeed.
Years would pass and each of the friends would go on to achieve renown as members of Wobbler, Tusmørke, The Samuel Jackson Five, and Jordsjø, all of which are familiar by now to anybody who has a passing familiarity with Scandinavian progressive rock. But they never lost sight of their dream and now, thirty years later, The Chronicles of Father Robin, at this point constituting a legit prog supergroup, has been fully realized via a triple concept album called The Songs & Tales of Airoea, released first as a boxset and then as individual albums to follow*. Achieving full integration with the project’s mythos, the amazing artwork of Lars Bigum Kvernberg, commissioned exclusively for this project, adorns each album to include covers, sleeves, lyric sheets and booklets, and gorgeously rendered maps of mythical Airoea.
Book 1: The Tale of Father Robin (State of Nature) opens with “Prologue,” a little one minute soundscape of wind, approaching footsteps, and the sound of minstrels on the other side of a door. The door opens, the musicians come into view, and the first proper song begins. Also brief at just over a minute, “The Tale of Father Robin” introduces the titular character as a magical fellow, the Prince of Day and Light, the Maker of the Rivers and the Tree of Life, Waker of the Spring, and Brother of the Night. As unassuming and maybe even unnecessary as the introductory passages may seem to be at first blush, their inclusion and design (i.e., as chapters rather than integrated sections) say something important about the artists’ intent to tell a fully fledged story, to invite the listener to join with the music, to fully immerse themselves into the world from which the music is born, because this is how the magic is realized.
If the introduction states the band’s intent to roundly regale the listener with magical tales, the first long form song, “Eleision Forest,” states their further and firmer intent to blow the listener’s socks cleanly and completely off. Every player charges the stage at once in an explosion of analog symphonic rock and roll joy and wonder, announcing to the world that not only is prog rock alive and well, but it is kickin’ ass. Right away, the seasoned prog fan will notice the sounds and spirit of classic prog rock heroes as well those of the modern (and especially Norwegian) scene, but there really is no clear link here beyond homage – this is a band of expert players and songwriters in every sense, paying tribute to their forebears in the truest way: with original songs to rival those golden era classics.
The standard rock and roll arrangement of guitar, bass, and drums comprises the instrumental core of The Tale of Father Robin, but its execution is often surprisingly strong in the way of those early days when heavy metal meant something a little different. Uriah Heep and Deep Purple and Rush are fair references and especially those occasionally burly early wallopers from Genesis (e.g., “The Knife”) and Yes (e.g., “Heart of the Sunrise”). Riffs are the heart of rock, of course, and the spotlight favors the guitars accordingly on Father Robin, but there is also no fewer than a dozen other instruments at work throughout and that’s not even including an impressive array of vocal elements. Acoustic guitars and mandolin; orchestral strings; piano in addition to organ, clavinet, Mellotron and other keyboard synthesizers; lots of percussion including drums and glockenspiel; various electronics and related sound effect machines. A place for every instrument and every instrument in its place, except when it’ll work better in a different place, in which case that.
Perhaps most remarkably, the songs on Book 1 
exalt two of rock and roll’s most famously unsung heroes. Bass guitar, particularly in heavy metal, has so often been unfairly relegated to the shadows that it’s been a running joke in metal music circles for decades. Throughout The Tale of Father Robin, the bass is given big slices of spotlight and quite often takes the dominant role in the soundscape. At the other end of the sonic spectrum, the flute is celebrated, as well. As much as the flute has been vaunted in some small circles, especially in prog, it sure seems to have remained a real underdog more broadly, something of an occasionally spectacular anomaly (hello, Jethro, please extend apologies to Jerry Eubanks and Herbie Mann and the funky Ms. Humphries). Here the flute is remembered and treated with lead-instrument love and respect, recalling those giants of yore in Tull, Camel, and Focus, celebrating them alongside modern Scandinavian torchbearers in Tusmørke, Wobbler, and Agusa, among others.
True to the spirit of prog’s golden era, Father Robin’s songs are alive with the essence of nature, always moving and growing, always going somewhere, sometimes gently like the breeze through the willows in those more pastoral moments, and sometimes feral and frenetic like fey creatures of the forest spinning and dancing with the Princess of Water. And as in any great story, there’s plenty of surprises in store. The beat that opens “The Death of the Fair Maiden” is initially so strange in its funky gait that it’ll surely make a few listeners check their playback device for pixie dust. Once the bass enters, though, somehow both jaunty and stately like a great prancing steed, the listener is reminded that this is the music of a place as fantastic as it is fantastical, so some sassiness is to be expected, a sentiment magnificently confirmed by the transition at six minutes from this sad chapter’s turning point to its absolutely stunning denouement, wrapping up Side One’s four songs in 22:22.
Side Two opens with a decidedly different feel as bass, organ, and electronic effects paint a misty and foreboding landscape of “Twilight Fields” before bursting through the fog with the answer to the question of how awesome it would have been had Ian Anderson been a part of Rush’s early adventures in fantasy (even more awesome than you probably expect given the question, it turns out). “Twilight Fields” is 15+ minutes and runs the full gamut of symphonic prog songwriting tropes without ever feeling contrived. Which brings up another of the album’s great strengths (and of the band’s), and that’s the ability of the players to coalesce throughout, even as they individually shine. Listeners who know will catch glimpses and sometimes full frontal exposure of the members’ main bands’ sounds and styles and yet there’s no part of Book 1 that doesn’t sound like a fully invested Chronicles of Father Robin. It’s kind of amazing that way, really. Album closer, “Unicorn,” comes closest to full-on worship at any given point, but only in its midsection, and its late maelstrom of King Crimson- and Anekdoten-inspired Yes is about as fresh a take on that band’s uniqueness as has ever turned down the pike, even from Wobbler. It also makes for a helluva closing moment to The Songs & Tales of Airoea’s first book.
What an absolute joy to share in the real life culmination of a group of friends’ lifelong dream. The music world is replete with stories of projects that take years and even decades to come to fruition and then end up unremarkable or worse in the end. Add to that the curse of the super group, and it’s nothing short of wondrous that The Chronicles of Father Robin is as good as it is, at least as far as Book I: The Tale of Father Robin (State of Nature), at this point. In an entertainment world that uses words like “fallen” and “dead” when referring to prog rock, it’s so very nice to see a group of young artists, already successful in their own rights, release an album that not only stands tall in the shadow of prog’s legacy, but generates extraordinary light of its own for the world to see.
*Last Rites will review Book II: Ocean Traveller (Metamorphosis) and Book III: Magical Chronicle (Ascension) as they’re released.
The Chronicles of Father Robin
– Andreas Wettergreen Strømman Prestmo / vocals, guitars, bass, synth, organ, glockenspiel, percussion
– Aleksandra Morozova / vocals
– Thomas Hagen Kaldhol / guitars, mandolin, electronics & sound effects, backing vocals
– Regin Meyer / flute, organ, piano, backing vocals
– Jon Andre Nilsen / bass, backing vocals
– Henrik Harmer / drums & percussion, synth, backing vocals
With:
– Lars Fredrik Frøislie / keyboards, organ, Mellotron, piano, synth
– Kristoffer Momrak / synth
– Håkon Oftung / organ, clavinet, Mellotron, strings, electric piano, synth
– Ingjerd Moi / backing vocals
