Robert Plant Albums (9)
What The Critics Say
What seems to be an unlikely pairing in the duo of former -- and future apparently -- Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant and bluegrass superstar Alison Krauss is actually one of the most effortless-sounding pairings in modern popular music. The bridge seems to be producer T-Bone Burnett and the band assembled for this outing: drummer Jay Bellerose (who seems to be the session drummer in demand these days), upright bassist Dennis Crouch, guitarists Marc Ribot and Burnett, with Greg Leisz playing steel here and there, and a number of other guest appearances. Krauss, a monster fiddle player, only does so on two songs here. The proceedings are, predictably, very laid-back. Burnett has only known one speed these last ten years, and so the material chosen by the three is mostly very subdued. This doesn't make it boring, despite Burnett's production, which has become utterly predictable since he started working with Gillian Welch. He has a "sound" in the same way Daniel Lanois does: it's edges are all rounded, everything is very warm, and it all sounds artificially dated. (Anyone looking for the adventurous bravery he put into Sam Phillips' Martinis & Bikinis will be disappointed.) Speaking of Phillips, her "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us" is a centerpiece on this set. It has Phillips' fingerprints all over it; she recorded it herself already and has her own version on her website. This tune, with its forlorn, percussion-heavy tarantella backdrop, might have come from a Tom Waits record were it not so intricately melodic -- and Krauss' gypsy swing fiddle is a gorgeous touch. There is an emptiness at the heart of longing particularly suited to Krauss' woodsy voice, and Plant's harmony vocal is perfect, understated yet ever-present. It's the most organically atmospheric tune on the set -- not in terms of production, but for lyric and compositional content. Stellar. Plant's own obsession with old rockabilly and blues tunes is satisfied on the set's opener, "Rich Woman," by Dorothy LaBostrie and McKinley Miller. It's all swamp, all past midnight, all gigolo boasting. Krauss' harmony vocal underscores Plant's low-key crooned boast as a mirror, as the person being used and who can't help it. Rollie Salley's "Killing the Blues" sounds like it was recorded by Lanois, with its cough syrup guitars, muffled tom toms, and played-in-bedroom atmospherics. Nonetheless, the two vocalists make a brilliant song come to life with their shared sorrow, and it's as if the meaning in the tune actually happens between its bitter irony in the space between the two vocalists as the whine of Leisz's steel roots this country song in the earth, not in the white clouds reflected in its refrain. There is a pair of Gene Clark tunes here as well. Plant is a Clark fan, and so it's not a surprise, but the choices are: "Polly Come Home" and "Through the Morning, Through the Night" come from the second Dillard & Clark album from 1969 with the same title as the latter track. The first is a haunting ballad done in an old-world folk style that Clark would have been proud of. It reflects the same spirit and character as his own White Light album, but with Plant and Krauss, the spirit of Celtic-cum-Appalachian style that influenced bluegrass, and the Delta blues that influenced rock, are breached. "Through the Morning, Through the Night" is a wasted country love song told from the point of view of an outlaw. Plant gets his chance to rock -- a bit -- in the Everly Brothers' "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)." While it sounds nothing like the original, Plant's pipes get to croon and drift over the distorted guitars and a clipped snare; he gets to do his trademark blues improv bit between verses. To be honest, it feels like it was tossed off and, therefore, less studied than anything else here: it's a refreshing change of pace near the middle of the disc. It "rocks" in a roots way. "Please Read the Letter" is written by Plant, Page Charlie Jones, and Michael Lee. Slow, plodding, almost crawling, Krauss' harmony vocal takes it to the next step, adds the kind of lonesome depth that makes this a song whispered under a starless sky rather than just another lost love song. Waits and Kathleen Brennan's "Trampled Rose," done shotgun ballad style, is, with the Phillips tune, the most beautiful thing here. Krauss near the top of her range sighs into the rhythm. Patrick Warren's toy piano sounds more like a marimba, and his pump organ adds to the percussive nature of this wary hymn from the depths. When she sings "You never pay just once/To get the job done," this skeletal band swells. Ribot's dobro sounds like a rickety banjo, and it stutters just ahead of the bass drum and tom toms in Bellerose's kit. Naomi Neville's "Fortune Teller" shows Burnett at his best as a producer. He lets Plant's voice come falling out of his mouth, staggering and stuttering the rhythms so they feel like a combination of Delta blues, second-line New Orleans, and Congo Square drum walk. The guitar is nasty and distorted, and the brush touches with their metallic sheen are a nice complement to the bass drums. It doesn't rock; it struts and staggers on its way. Krauss' wordless vocal in the background creates a nice space for that incessant series of rhythms to play to. The next three tunes are cagey, even for this eclectic set: Mel Tillis' awesome ballad "Stick with Me Baby" sounds more like Dion & the Belmonts on the street corner on cough syrup and meaning every word. There is no doo wop, just the sweet melody falling from the singers' mouths like an incantation with an understated but pronounced rhythm section painting them singing together in front of a burning ash can. This little gem is followed by a reading of Townes Van Zandt's "Nothin'" done in twilight Led Zeppelin style. It doesn't rock either. It plods and drifts, and crawls. Krauss' fiddle moans above the tambourine, indistinct and distorted; low-tuned electric guitars and the haunted, echoing banjo are a compelling move and rescue the melody from the sonic clutter -- no, sonic clutter is not a bad thing. The weirdest thing is that while it's the loudest tune on the set, it features Norman Blake on acoustic guitar with Burnett. This is what singer/songwriter heavy metal must sound like. And it is oh-so-slow. The final part of the trilogy of the weird takes place on Little Milton Campbell's "Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson," a jangly country rocker in the vein of Neil Young without the weight and creak of age hindering it. Krauss is such a fine singer, and she does her own Plant imitation here. She has his phrasing down, his slippery way of enunciating, and you can hear why this was such a great match-up. The band can play backbone slip rockabilly shuffle with their eyes closed and their hands tied behind their backs, and they do it here. It's a great moment before the close. The haunting, old-timey {&"Your Long Journey by A.D. and Rosa Lee Watso
What The Critics Say
After years of trying to separate himself from his legendary status as Led Zeppelin's frontman, Robert Plant finally reconciles with his past on Now & Zen. He borrows a few Zeppelin riffs, and even enlists Jimmy Page to play guitar on his hit "Tall Cool One." This album is also notable in that it marks his first collaboration with keyboardist Phil Johnstone, who would continue to play and write with Plant on subsequent albums. Musically, the album relies on standard rock arrangements except that the vocals and drums are at the forefront and keyboards instead of guitars are used to fill out the sound. Although most of the album is comprised of mid-tempo songs aimed at rock radio, Plant includes the lovely ballad "Ship of Fools," which demonstrates that he is more than capable of vocal subtlety. Plant, who often uses mysterious (and mystical) lyrics, writes some of his most direct songs, and the way in which the lyrics complement the melodic arrangements are partially responsible for the commercial success of Now & Zen. This is Robert Plant's best solo album, and a must-own for fans of Led Zeppelin. ~ Vik Iyengar, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
On Mighty Rearranger, the core of the band Robert Plant showcased on 2002's Dreamland -- and named the Strange Sensation -- is a full-blown expanded lineup that shares the bill with him. Guitarists Justin Adams and Skin Tyson, drummer Clive Deamer, keyboardist John Baggot, and bassist Billy Fuller help Plant give listeners his most musically satisfying and diverse recording since, well, Led Zeppelin's Physical Grafitti. The reference is not a mere platitude to Plant's pedigree. The songs, production, and sequencing of the album overtly incorporates those sounds as well as those of Eastern modalism, Malian folk, guitar rock, R&B, and others, for inspiration -- and why shouldn't they? Mighty Rearranger opens with "Another Tribe," a sociopolitical ballad that touches upon the textural string backdrops from Zep's "Kashmir" and is fueled by Moroccan bendir drums. Adams' guitar shifts it over to rock in the middle, but never crowds the crystalline lilting vocal. The single, "Shine It All Around," sports Deamer's crunch and crack drums, while Adams' canny emulation of Jimmy Page's Les Paul toneography fills Plant's sung and moaned lines with ferocity. But it is "Freedom Fries," with its startling percussive syncopation and juxtaposition of roots rockabilly blues and hard rock -- à la "Black Dog" -- that breaks the record wide open and shatters the sensual tension with pure Dionysian RAWK swagger. On "Tin Pan Valley," Baggot's whispering keyboard lines under Plant's nocturnal moan set a mood -- slippery, sexy, undulating -- before Deamer cracks through with cymbal and snare work that not only emulates John Bonham, but evokes his power, unfurling the Zep talons deeper into the core of the album. The beautiful balladry of "All the King's Horses" offers solid proof of Plant's ability to reference the English folk tradition with elegance and taste, and his continued acumen for fine lyric writing. The acoustic guitars purposely kiss the same space that Page did on "Over the Hills and Far Away" and "Goin' to California," but are balanced by Adams' pastoral electric country fills. But here's the important part: the Zeppelin spirit that is seemingly ever present here takes nothing away from the startling imagination and creativity on Mighty Rearranger -- it actually serves, rather than houses, the songs it adorns. And it's the songs, like the sultry slow stroll of "The Enchanter" and the North African-flavored rocker "Takamba," that matter. Plant and Strange Sensation have painstakingly and energetically crafted an album that takes his full history into account, yet offers something living, breathing, and actually new. This is big rock music making an appearance on the scene agian. It's music that is full of itself, sneers at the competition, and pushes forward by acknowledging the full breadth of the music's tarted-up history. The dramatic "Let the Four Winds Blow" touches everything from early rock & roll to droning Delta blues to biker soundtrack music in a dramatic and utterly serious song. The title track uses the Malian guitar plank and turns it back on itself, pointing its gaze toward John Lee Hooker, Skip James, and the piano blues of Otis Spann. The album closes with Baggot's barroom blues piano that propels Plant to pay a brief barrelhouse tribute to Ray Charles on "Brother Ray." Mighty Rearranger is a literate, ambitious, and sublimely vulgar exercise in how to make a mature yet utterly unfettered rock & roll album that takes chances, not prisoners, and apologizes for nothing. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
At their best, cover albums have a strange way of galvanizing an artist by returning to the songs that inspired them; the artists can find the reason why they made music in the first place, perhaps finding a new reason to make music. Robert Plant's Dreamland -- his first solo album in nearly ten years and one of the best records he's ever done, either as a solo artist or as a member of Led Zeppelin -- fulfills that simple definition of a covers album and goes beyond it, finding Plant sounding reinvigorated and as restless as a new artist. Part of the reason why this album works so well is that he has a new band -- not a group of supporting musicians, but a real band whose members can challenge him because they tap into the same eerie, post-folk mysticism that fueled Led Zeppelin III, among other haunting moments in the Zep catalog. Another reason why this album works so well is that it finds the band working from a similar aesthetic point as classic Zeppelin, who, at their peak, often reinterpreted and extrapolated their inspirations, piecing them together to create something startlingly original. That's the spirit here, most explicitly on the blues medley "Win My Train Fare Home (If I Ever Get Lucky)," but also throughout the record, as he offers radical reinventions of such cult favorites as Bob Dylan's "One More Cup of Coffee," Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren," and the Youngbloods' "Darkness, Darkness," along with such staples as "I Believe I'm Fixin' to Die" and "Hey Joe." What's amazing about this album is that it is as adventurous and forward-thinking -- perhaps even more so -- as anything he's ever done. He's abandoned the synthesizers that distinguished each of his solo albums and replaced them with a restless, searching band that pushes every one of these songs past conventional expectations (and, in the case of the two strong originals, they make the new tunes sound as one with the covers). Dreamland rarely sounds like Led Zeppelin, but its spirit is pure Zeppelin; this, in a sense, is what he was trying to do with the Page and Plant albums -- find a way back into the mystic by blending folk, worldbeat, blues, rock, and experimentalism into music that is at once grounded in the past and ceaselessly moving forward. He might have co-authored only two pieces here, but Dreamland is a fully realized product of his own vision -- as unpredictable and idiosyncratic, as fulfilling and full of mystery as anything he's ever released. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
At first, Fate of Nations seems so light and airy that it slips away through the layers of acoustic guitars, violins, and keyboards. Upon further listenings, more textures appear, and the album gains a calm sense of tension and reflectiveness. It's also Robert Plant's most personal record ever; he addresses the death of his son in the beautiful "I Believe." Simultaneously, Fate of Nations is a political album -- "Great Spirit" and "Network News" are two of the most socially conscious songs Plant has ever written. Yet, the album is never heavy-handed and doesn't fall into sermonizing or sentimentality. Plant has always had a folkie heart; on Fate of Nations, he wears it on his sleeve. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
'Pictures at Eleven'
Release Date 10/25/1990
Tracks 8
Label Swan Song
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
For his debut solo album, Robert Plant doesn't exactly succumb to everyone's expectations. With a less-potent vocal style, Plant manages to carry out most of the songs in smooth, stylish fashion while rocking out rather convincingly on a couple of others. He gets some pretty good help from guitarist Robbie Blunt, who truly comes to life on "Worse Than Detroit," and both Phil Collins and Cozy Powell give Plant enough of a solid background to lean his sultry yet surging rock voice against. Plant channels his energy quite effectively through songs like "Pledge Pin" and "Moonlight in Samosa," while the single "Burning Down One Side" is a creditable one, even though it failed to crack the Top 50 in both the U.K. and the U.S. The most apparent characteristic about the album's eight tracks is the fact that Plant is able to escape most of his past and still sound motivated. Without depending too much on his Led Zeppelin days, he courses a new direction without changing or disguising his distinct vocal style whatsoever. Pictures at Eleven peaked within the Top Five on both sides of the Atlantic, successfully launching Plant's solo career. ~ Mike DeGagne, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
While some of Shaken 'N Stirred's makeup includes typical keyboard pop/rock, there's still plenty of variance, both vocally and otherwise, to keep the album from going under. The album cracked the Top 20 in the U.S. and in Britain thanks to the keen finesse of "Little by Little," which spreads out Plant's vocal puissance across an attractive rhythm. This time around, drummer Richard Hayward from Little Feat adds some percussive texture to a mixture of world beats, unconventional melodies and rhythms, and a number of other creative and colorful musical nuances. Some of the music sounds a little foreign and profound at first, but efforts like "Hip to Hoo" and "Kallalou" grow to be impressive, beyond-the-norm-styled numbers after a few listens. Plant's decision to create a non-commercial type of rock album proved that he could step outside his typical rock & roll roots and still make some appealing music, yet many fans found the album to be too dense and too experimental upon its initial release. Plant's voguish character is still ingrained throughout the tracks, and his tangents aren't so overwhelming that they throw his material in an altogether complete direction. If anything, the songs on Shaken 'N Stirred are an inspiring venture for Plant, as he manages to fulfill his slightly off-centered approach with some interesting and catchy results. ~ Mike DeGagne, All Music Guide
'The Principle of Moments'
Release Date 1/1/1983
Tracks 8
Label Es Paranza
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Robert Plant's follow-up to Pictures at Eleven implements much of his debut's style and vocal meandering into a new and more exciting bunch of songs. The mysteriousness of "Big Log," the album's first single, reached the Top 20 in the United States and in the U.K., while "In the Mood" is The Principle of Moments' finest offering, proving that Plant could roam freely with his voice and still have it work effectively. But Plant doesn't stop here, as he gives tracks like "Wreckless Love," "Stranger Here...Than Over There," and "Other Arms" an equal amount of curt abstractness and rock appeal. Because Plant's voice is so compelling in any state, the convolution of his writing tends to take a back seat to his singing in most of his solo work, which is definitely the case in most of the songs here. Plant went on tour with the Honeydrippers within the same year of The Principle of Moments' release, adding another facet to his already diverse solo repertoire. ~ Mike DeGagne, All Music Guide
