Tuesday, September 25, 2012

ROBERT PLANT AND THE SENSATIONAL SHAPE SHIFTERS

In the past couple of years, Robert Plant has left a few great bands in his wake, one of whom was Led Zeppelin.

After the incredibly successful one-off Led Zeppelin reunion concert from 2007, he left huge, multi-millon dollar deals for a larger scale reunion on the table to go off and tour with Alison Krauss.

Of course, that ended up working out for him: the Raising Sand album won six Grammys, sold a ton, and redefined him as a more mature (but not "adult contemporary") artist. Of course, there had to be a lot of pressure for them to follow up that classic album, but Robert bailed on that one too, to form the Band Of Joy with Buddy Miller from the Raising Sand touring band, and Patty Griffin, whom Buddy was producing at the time.

That was a really cool album, but again, Robert has moved on to form a new band, The Sensational Shape Shifters.  I don't know when the new album is coming out, but Plant made a very interesting move: on July 12, he and his band did a gig in London, and released it as a downloadable live album the next day.

This sounds like his most wild band yet.  I loved the band will Alison Krauss, but it was pretty musically conservative, as many T-Bone Burnett productions are (and I love Burnett's productions). I loved Band Of Joy as well, but it was like a harder edged version of the Krauss band. But bringing back guitarist Justin Adams, who worked with him on the Mighty Rearranger album, brings back the non-anglo/world music vibe that he hasn't had for a while. There are some really great versions of Zeppelin songs on this live album.   I'm definitely looking forward to the new studio album, which will be made up of mostly originals.

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