Robert Plant Lullaby…and the Ceaseless Roar released

Lullaby…and the Ceaseless Roar Robert Plant

Released: September 8, 2014 Peak: 10 US, 2 UK, 6 CN, 22 AU Sales (in millions): 0.1 UK Genre: rock

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts. Little Maggie Rainbow (7/19/14, 8 AA) Pocketful of Golden Embrace Another Fall Turn It Up A Stolen Kiss Somebody There Poor Howard House of Love Up on the Hollow Hill (Understanding Arthur) Arbaden (Maggie’s Babby) Total Running Time: 49:30

Rating: 2.587 out of 5.00 (average of 11 ratings)

About the Album: Robert Plant recorded his tenth post-Led Zeppelin solo album with his backing band the Sensational Shape Shifters. That band included Justin Adams and John Baggot, who also worked with Plant on his Dreamland album in 2002. Most of the band also worked with Plant for 2005’s Mighty Rearranger. It was his label debut for Nonesuch/Warner Bros. Records. In discussing the record, Plant said “It’s really a celebratory record, powerful, gritty, African, Trance meets Zep…The whole impetus of my life as a singer has to be driven by a good brotherhood. I am very lucky to work with The Sensational Space Shifters. They come from exciting areas of contemporary music…I have been around awhile and I ask myself, do I have anything to say? Is there a song still inside me? In my heart? I see life and what’s happening to me. Along the trail there are expectations, disappointments, happiness, questions and strong relationships…and now I’m able to express my feelings through melody, power and trance; together in a kaleidoscope of sound, colour, and friendship.” AZ “From the synth-smoothed pop of his 1980s albums to the deep-seated obsession with late-‘60s psych-folk that flourished on 2002’s Dreamland to his dust-up with bluegrass belle Alison Krauss on 2007’s Grammy-winning Raising Sand, Plant has seemed almost embarrassed by the proto-metal bombast and legacy of lechery…that defined his ‘70s tenure in Led Zeppelin.” PF In recent years, he’s used his “enduring star power to humbly play cover-song reverence to the unsung heroes…he feels should be just as famous as he is.” PF This, however, is Plant’s “first batch of original songs in nearly a decade and some of the most bravely confessional writing of his career.” PF The album retains “the low-key elegance of his post-millennial output” PF while staying “true to his original spirit of Led Zeppelin – i.e., retrofitting Depression-era folk and blues for contemporary audiences.” PF A reworked version of the Stanley Brothers’ Little Maggie from the 1940s serves as the opener. It “thematically foreshadow[s] the Plant-penned tales of lost love” PF “upon wich at least half of the album dwells.” NPR A Stolen Kiss is a “plaintive, quietly devastating piano ballad” PF which draws on “Celtic traditionalism.” NPR That and “a crystalline Byrds/Velvets jangle to the melancholic House of Love…candidly address his split from [Patty] Griffin,” PF “Plant’s foil in his Cajuun-spiced Band of Joy” PF album in 2010. Pocketful of Golden “shares its opening line with Zeppelin’s totemic ‘Thank You,’ though its heady sway more closely resembles Plant’s 1983 hit ‘In the Mood’ given a bellydancer spin.” PF The song finds him “behaving like a Romantic pastoralist who’s ingested a few psychedelics in his time.” NPR Poor Howard is one of many in “Plant’s canon of winsome countrified shuffles” PF and “invokes Leadbelly.” NPR Turn It Up “is the Space Shifters’ chance to get the Led out; its bluesy charm resembling a swamp-covered ‘Four Sticks’” PF while simultaneously recalling U2’s Bono and the Edge on “Bad.” NPR “The highlands-bound hymn Rainbow and the shimmering, paisley-patterned pop of Somebody There present golden opportunities to savor Plant’s ageless, eminently graceful voice.” PF The latter places Plant in “a memory of wandering the English countryside as a boy.” NPR Embrace Another Fall, with its “rich, jazz-tinged” NPR sound is the album’s “most epically scaled track – loading up on ominous orchestral textures, a ritualistic drum rumble, arena-rockin’ guitar fireworks, and a grafted-on passage of an ancient Welsh folk song, ‘Marwnad yr Ehedydd.’” PF Throughout the album, “Plant creates himself as a character in songs that, like the music itself, borrow from a past well-studied and well-lived.” NPR Some of the imagery, such as calling himself a rainbow, or singing about packing his suitcase “like the Southern bluesmen and early rockers who’ve always been at the foundation of his persona” NPR “would seem corny coming from a lesser synthesist, but he and the Shape Shifters bring it to life in settings so vividly constructed, the familiar phrases gain new life.” NPR

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Robert Plant AZ Amazon NPR NPR review by Ann Powers PF Pitchfork review by Stuart Berman WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 8/17/2021.

 

Robert Plant Mighty Rearranger released

Mighty Rearranger Robert Plant

Released: April 25, 2005 Peak: 22 US, 4 UK, 51 AU Sales (in millions): 0.04 US, 0.06 UK Genre: rock

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts. Another Tribe Shine It All Around (3/26/05, 11 AA, 18 AR, 32 UK) Freedom Fries Tin Pan Alley All the King’s Horses The Enchanter (2005, --) Takamba Dancing in Heaven Somebody Knocking Let the Four Winds Blow Mighty Rearranger Brother Ray Total Running Time: 54:14

Rating: 3.600 out of 5.00 (average of 25 ratings) Quotable: Plant’s “most musically satisfying and diverse recording since…Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti.” – Thom Jurek, All Music Guide Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: After the “tentative Dreamland” Q covers album in 2002, “Mighty Rearranger was Plant’s true comeback album.” Q The album consists of an expanded version of the Strange Sensation band which worked with him on the previous album. In addition, Phil Johnstone, who co-wrote with Plant on 1988’s Now and Zen returned as a co-producer. They “have painstakingly and energetically crafted an album that takes his full history into account.” AMG The result is Plant’s “most musically satisfying and diverse recording since…Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti.” AMG This is “an imaginative, confident record” Q which blends “world and Western music influences with mystical, oblique and somewhat cynical references to religion and destiny.” WK “It found room for booming Zeppelin-style drums on Shine It All Around,” Q which also features Justin Adams’ “canny emulation of Jimmy Page’s Les Paul toneography [which] fills Plant’s sung and moaned lines with ferocity.” AMG Freedom Fries, which incorporates “21st-century rockabilly,” Q offers “startling percussive syncopation and juxtaposition of roots rockabilly blues and hard rock – a la ‘Black Dog’ – that…shatters the sensual tension.” AMG The song is critical of George W. Bush’s presidency and the post-September 11 climate. WK Another Tribe is “a sociopolitical ballad that touches upon the textural string backdrops from Zep’s ‘Kashmir’ and is fueled by Moroccan bendir drums.” AMG There are also “African rhythms in Somebody’s Knocking.” Q On Tin Pan Alley, John Baggot’s “whispering keyboard lines under Plant’s nocturnal moan set a…slippery, sexy, undulating” AMG mood. “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.” AMG There’s also “the sultry slow stroll of The Enchanter and the North African-flavored rocker Takamba.” AMG “The dramatic Let the Four Winds Blow touches everything from early rock & roll to droning Delta blues to biker soundtrack music.” AMG

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Robert Plant AMG All Music Guide review by Thom Jurek Q Mark Blake, Q magazine, Sept. 2010, p. 133. WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 9/27/2010; last updated 8/16/2021.