During a lull in activity with the reformed Wolfhounds in the late 2010s,[3] David Lance Callahan began playing solo gigs in London, performing on vocals and unaccompanied electric guitar.

In an interview at writewyattuk, Callahan clarified that "it all came together during lockdown, when there wasn't a lot else to do other than catch up on my books, film and write songs really... there were a few things already recorded, but yeah, once we weren’t allowed to leave the house I basically finished off more than a double-LP's worth of material and got Tiny Global to agree to put them out.

As with any recording favouring the avant-garde — works like Balaklava, Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, and The Heart of the Congos — one might expect that the impact of English Primitive I will be revealed slowly, over a much longer span of time than the too-often workaday product of today's independent music scene.

With this album, Callahan takes his place alongside cult heroes Robert Wyatt, Scott Walker and Cathal Coughlan as a prime example of seemingly limitless artistic expression."

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".

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...

"[8] 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...

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.

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.

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.

"[9] 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...