The final album Steeleye Span made before their initial breakup finds their lineup in serious transition--the great folk guitarist Martin Carthy had returned to the band after six years away, but several longstanding members had left, and punk and disco had become their Scylla and Charybdis. Consequently, Storm Force Ten is their most experimental album, centered on a pair of long tracks that go rather far afield from the British folk tradition: a strangely glossy cover of the Brecht/Weill classic "The Black Freighter" (from The Threepenny Opera), and "The Victory," a multi-part song about Lord Nelson with a gorgeously harmonized chorus and an L.A.-inflected arrangement. --Douglas Wolk