Given the continuing success of his long and eclectic solo career, it’s hardly surprising that Robert Plant steadfastly refuses to countenance a Led Zeppelin reunion. Now aged 66, the Staffordshire-born singer is still considered an influential artist – seemingly at peace with his hard rock legacy, but endlessly curious about the myriad possibilities that world music has to offer. No matter how much loot is put on the table, or how badly Jimmy Page sulks, you’d imagine that belting out ‘Kashmir’ or ‘Stairway To Heaven’ night after night to stadiums full of adoring fans doesn’t hold much appeal for the former golden-haired god.
The intriguingly titled Lullaby And...The Ceaseless Roar is Plant’s tenth solo album and his first collection of original songs since 2005’s Mighty Rearranger. Self-produced and mostly recorded at Helium Studios in Wiltshire and Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, it marks the legendary singer’s return to his English countryside roots after a number of years based in Texas and Nashville.
Musically it offers a highly technologized smorgasbord of the musical and lyrical styles he’s experimented with over the years – from the rhythms and rhymes of North Africa, North America, Europe and the Middle East to the expressive Celtic and Romantic literary lines he’s always subtly pilfered. Having recently split with American singer Patty Griffin (who was a member of his Band Of Joy), it’s also partly a reflective break-up album.
They’re not credited on the cover, but the band here is The Sensational Space Shifters. Their number includes virtuoso guitarist Justin Adams, who toured with Plant’s band The Strange Sensation from 2001 to 2007, Gambian griot Juldeh Camara, and percussionist Dave Smith. The album is bookended by very different versions of ‘Little Maggie’, an old-time Appalachian tune about unrequited love and separation (apparently he couldn’t nail it for 2007’s Raising Sand, but decided to try again here). The song also features Camara singing in the Fulani language.
On the other nine original tracks, Plant often sings in an androgynous and unrecognisably otherworldly voice, alternating between sorrow and serenity. Despite the disparate musical and vocal styles, it all flows fluidly. He addresses his break-up with Griffin and return to England on the superbly jazz-tinged ‘Embrace Another Fall’: “Oh so blue must turn to grey/ And out upon the shire/ All through the frost and rain/ I make my home.”
Elsewhere he invokes other rock legends, sounding uncannily like Roy Orbison on ‘House Of Love’, and Tom Waits on the splenetic ‘Turn it Up’. ‘Stolen Kiss’ tips his hat at Celtic traditionalism and ‘Poor Howard’, featuring African beats, banjos and fiddles, is derived from Leadbelly’s ‘Po’ Howard’.
All told, it’s another brilliantly beguiling Plant triumph. That gnashing noise you can hear in the background is Jimmy Page grinding his teeth.