Band of Joy will stream in its entirety until its release on Sept. 14.
NPR - After 40 years of making records, Robert Plant still has the integrity I heard on the very first Led Zeppelin record in 1969. Not many artists fit that bill. It speaks not only to his uncommon and unrivaled voice, but also to his choice of musicians and influences. [Read more]
On the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Plant gave a a world exclusive; the first televised performance of a track from his new album.
LATE last year, in a Nashville recording studio, Robert Plant, the former Led Zeppelin frontman, had a revelation. He was working on a new solo record, a project he began after scrapping plans for a sequel to “Raising Sand,” his 2007 album of duets with the country singer Alison Krauss that sold 2.5 million copies worldwide.
“I suddenly felt very free and liberated,” Mr. Plant said by telephone from his home in England near the Welsh border. “The moment was open ended, with a huge horizon, and that’s how I used to feel about music. This great weight fell away from me and I thought, ‘I could be 17 here.’ It took me back to how I felt when I was in the Band of Joy.” [Read more]
With his Rapunzel hair and frequent grin, Robert Plant does not immediately give the impression of being the most bloody-minded man in the music industry. He takes to the stage for the first night of his UK tour with a skip in his step; his unbuttoned black shirt merely hinting at the rock satyr of old. And yet the jovial 62-year-old prancing about the stage is a man with his heels dug in hard. [Read more]
Robert Plant - Forum, London, 4 out of 5
There’s something a little strange about the audience response as Robert Plant and the latest incarnation of the Band of Joy – the name of his and the late John Bonham’s pre-Led Zeppelin mob, currently serving as a flag of convenience for a collection of crack Nashville session musicians – launch into Led Zep’s Misty Mountain Hop. This kind of thing is part of the reason people buy tickets to see Plant: a rock legend performing one of the songs that made him legendary in the first place. Yet the reaction seems muted.
Perhaps the audience don’t recognise it. In the hands of the Band of Joy, the song is stripped of its thumping drums, raging guitars and mood of stoned loucheness. Instead, performed as duet between Plant and vocal foil Patty Griffin, it’s wistful and nostalgic, as perhaps befits a song about being busted for smoking grass being sung by a man in his 60s. [Read more]
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