Band of Joy
Album | Robert Plant
Dirty, psych-tinged roots rock.
For those who haven’t been keeping track, Robert Plant started leaving his larger-than-life rock-god persona behind as early as 2002’s Dreamland, dominated by swirling, soft-pedaled psych-folk covers. In the wake of his 2007 platinum-selling, award-winning pairing with Alison Krauss, which re-imagined a brace of rootsy classics, he offers another batch of Americana covers. But instead of gentle, T-Bone Burnett-produced neo-folk, Band of Joy finds Plant kicking up his heels in a different Nashville neighborhood, with producer/guitarist Buddy Miller spurring him on to a swampy, churning set of dirty, psych-tinged roots rock. With singer/songwriter Patty Griffin replacing Krauss as his honey-voiced vocal foil, Plant alternately simmers, rumbles, and roars through gritty reinventions of an eclectic grab-bag of obscurities including the previously unrecorded Townes Van Zandt ballad “Harm’s Swift Way,” Richard Thompson’s “House of Cards,” two songs by ‘90s slowcore heroes Low, R&B queen Barbara Lynn’s “Can’t Buy My Love,” and more. At 62, Plant has made the most immediate-sounding album of his entire solo career – is it so hard to understand why he keeps resisting the idea of another Led Zeppelin reunion?
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