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Review: Jack Foley
FORMER Led Zeppelin supremo, Robert Plant, proves he has lost
none of his zest for exploring world music with his latest solo
album, Mighty Rearranger, a mighty guitar-driven epic
that continually impresses.
The album finds Plant reunited with his band, The Strange Sensation,
who worked with him on 2002’s Grammy-nominated, Dreamland,
and provides a tour-de-force for just about everyone concerned.
Written and created in Snowdonia and in the lea of Solsbury Hill,
the album developed organically, arising out of joyful anarchic
experimentation, to deliver an inspired collection of songs that
are raw and bristling with energy but also rich in texture and
detail.
Highlights include the recent single, Shine It All Around,
and the joyously psychedelic Dancing in Heaven, which
recalls a guitar sound reminiscent of Zeppelin's finest, as well
as more contemporary acts such as Kula Shaker.
The Eastern influences that reverberate throughout Dancing
in Heaven can be found at several points on the album, including
the background strings of opening track, Another Tribe,
which sets things in motion in spectacular fashion.
Shine It All Around boasts a commanding drumbeat set
against a temperamental and malignant bassline, while unleashing
Plant's trademark primal scream for the first time during its
soaring chorus.
While Tin Pan Valley bristles with a slow-building energy
that is finally unleashed amid a whirlwind of guitar riffs at
the two-minute point.
Plant slows it down for the tender All The King's Horses,
which finds the artist at his most reflective and expressive,
but picks up the tempo for the blues-based The Enchanter,
which once more builds to a storming crescendo of epic guitars.
Yet every track on Mighty Rearranger hits home with
such unexpected force that it's difficult to find a flaw.
Some take more listens than others to get used to, but the album
is so rich in texture and so completely diverse that there is
always something to admire and discover.
Even the title track, Mighty Rearranger, which arrives
like an old fashioned rock-out complete with tinkling piano and
slabs of mouth organ, draws things to a close in suitably rousing
style.
Music fans would therefore be advised to Rearrange their own
record-buying wish-list to ensure that this humdinger doesn't
get omitted from it.
It's an out-and-out classic from one of rock's true legends.
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