Adam Sweeting CD of the week
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have apparently taken umbrage at the fact that the Pearl Jam song Given to Fly vaguely resembles Led Zeppelin’s Going to California. If anybody’s going to lift chunks from the Zep catalogue, which of course bears no resemblance to the work of any bluesmen living or dead, it’ll be them.
Hence, their new CD Walking into Clarksdale (Mercury) finds Zeppelin’s top twosome resuscitating echoes of their own mythic legacy, pushing a few familiar bluesy or Eastern-sounding buttons and garnishing the brew with lumbering Bonzo-style drums (courtesy of Michael Lee). Engineer Steve Albini’s ambition seems to have been to capture the basic quartet, completed by Charlie Jones on bass, live and loud in the studio, though the additional string effects, treatments and overdubs must have demanded a few gallons of midnight oil. The finished artefact launches itself out of the speakers with buckets of presence and attack, though nothing here is going to dislodge Zep’s best-loved tunes from classic rock stations worldwide. The obvious reference points for their new songs are the folkier pieces from Led Zeppelin III, the weird Eastern scales from Kashmir, and the pair’s Unledded performance for M-TV in 1994, which likewise looked towards the Khyber Pass for inspiration.
The single Most High is a ramshackle Afghan stomp full of bagpipes with Plant wailing like he’s got a mike stand up his bottom, and anybody yearning to hear Page flashing back to his heyday of raging guitarmanship has a few bright spots to look forward to on Blue Train and Please Read the Letter.
Even now, the world is their oyster.