Robert Plant will always be firstly known as the singer of Led Zeppelin, and shall be forever linked with guitarist Jimmy Page (especially as the two worked together, post-Zeppelin, in the eighties & nineties). But last year another collaboration, with bluegrass leading lady Allison Krauss, produced Raising Sand, which won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2009. Now in his own ‘Band of Joy’ (though the record’s marketed with that as its title, but the artist as ‘Robert Plant’), Plant stays very much in the bluegrass vein, losing ambition, but retaining baseline quality.
The old-time hootenanny of the relaxed stomp “Angel Dance” sets one tone for Band of Joy, as the record rarely exceeds its genres. But Plant does vary up the styles, including not just hoot but also revival touches, some spiritual, twang, darkness, restraint, size, and even, yes, rock to the bluegrass. The results are mixed, but the up-tempo like “Angel Dance” or roots-revival “Central Two-O-Nine” is largely the finest, while any mention of “love” the weakest – “You Can’t Buy My Love” is about as simple as the title suggests, and slow spiritual-soul of the following “Falling In Love Again” would have been an also-ran fifty years ago.
However, it is the moments of darkness that are the most interesting on Band of Joy, such as “Silver Rider” or the near-spooky “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down”, whose restraint keeps it from being a white man singing the gospel of the black man of a generation (or two) ago. And, rather oddly, it is in the blues-rock where Band is the most of a let-down: “House of Cards” is decent enough in its revival tone, but closer “Even This Shall Pass Away” sounds like Plant trying to do his own Jack White.
Nothing Robert Plant ever does is going to supercede ‘lead singer to Led Zeppelin’ in his obituary. But even that band was more than just “Zeppelin rules!”, trafficking in differing styles, something that has held Plant in good stead since the end of hard rock’s seventies heyday, enabling him to craft a solo career that is the envy of most other post-seminal sixties/seventies rockers. He hasn’t been afraid to team up with others, from his past & our present, staying relevant without looking desperate. Band of Joy isn’t going to be a standout of Plant’s post-Zeppelin career, but will certainly keep him going.
