ROBERT PLANT Carry Fire
9/10 Romantic longing and social commentary on Zep legend’s latest. By Neil Spencer
The long, sure resurgence of Robert Plant is one of popular music’s happier stories. Not that the post-Led Zeppelin Plant has ever been absent from stage or studio for long, but there is a marked difference between the singer of the 1980s and ’90s, unable to shrug off the weight of his Zeppelin incarnation, and the artist who has emerged in the 21st century, one comfortable with his past but not defined by it, whose musical parameters stretch across psych-rock, R&B, North African trance and much else, and whose cover versions and original songs bleed easily into each other.
Part of the credit for the transformation must go to Plant’s band, its nucleus present on 2002’s Dreamland, but fully formed for 2005’s Mighty ReArranger, with guitarist extraordinaire Justin Adams at its epicentre. Righteously renamed The Sensational Space Shifters, the restlessly inventive quintet share credits on the originals here, as they did on 2014’s Lullaby And… The Ceaseless Roar, with Plant once again in the producer’s chair.
In some respects, Carry
Fire is indeed a continuation of its predecessor, though there is a change in tone, the rootsy exuberance of Lullaby giving way to a mixture of romantic longing and social commentary – Plant clearly feels we’re living in a world gone wrong, and is old enough to remember the bravado of the American music scene he encountered during the era of the Vietnam war. The musical alchemy has shifted too, away from North Africa; former guest member, Gambia griot Juldeh Camara, is replaced by West Country folk fiddler Seth Lakeman, who plays on three cuts.
Nonetheless, opener “The May Queen” is a plunge back into desert blues, with Justin Adams scything out a killer acoustic riff over which Plant’s voice drifts, high and vulnerable, in a love call from “a heart that never falters”, while Lakeman delivers a groaning fiddle part that is as much Marrakesh as Dartmoor.
Thereafter the album’s moods veer in surprising fashion. “New World”, a thudding rocker about the immigration crisis, set about with strident guitars, is followed by “Season’s Song”, a gentle ballad with a dreamy, Beatlesesque ambience (its opening line bears a passing resemblance to Lennon’s “Oh
My Love”) and wistful lyrics about the passing of love and the seasons. “Dance With You Tonight” picks up the pace while staying in the same lovers’ zone, with Plant recalling an idyllic past when the “the fields of plenty were full” and “we lived in a world forever changing” (spot the classic album reference). From its acoustic opening, the number spirals upwards into a cavernous finale.
The mood switches once more with “Carving Up The World Again… A Wall And Not A Fence”, which begins as a piece of rebel rockabilly that might have tumbled off a Joe Strummer album, railing against the world’s history of militarism and warfare, with a timely warning that the same thing is happening again, its anger offset by some sweet, psych-rock guitar.
With “A Way With Words” we are back in a plaintive world of lost love and passing seasons. It’s unusually sparse, with Plant’s yearning vocals set against a grand piano, gentle Bristol beat science from John Baggott and a melancholy cello from Redi hasa.
If that number will be too downbeat for some, “Carry Fire” brings intensity. Middle eastern flavours return with a sinuous piece of oud-playing from Adams and a churning, multi-layered backdrop conjuring up an atmosphere of edgy mystery – think a souk-flavoured Massive Attack – over which Plant delivers a smoky, impassioned vocal. It’s subtle stuff, the vocal melodies set against occasional yelps and cello and viola parts, becoming a sublime piece of derangement worthy of its role as the album’s centrepiece.
“Bones Of Saints” again takes up the cudgel against militarism, a straightahead rock-out with a groaning Zep-like lament for the fires of war, and a verse that cuts to the quick of the matter: “From where the money comes?/Who buys the bullets?/Who sells the guns?”
The shuffle rhythm of “Keep It hid” is the nearest we get to straightforward rhythm and blues, though Plant’s husky, underplayed lyrics are sly, conjuring tarot-like images of “a silver key and a
golden cup” amid humming that recalls Willie John’s “Fever”. Short and sweet.
The only non-original is “Bluebirds Over The Mountain”, originally by 1950s rockabilly hero ersel hickey, but more widely known from the Beach Boys’ insipid cover version. Plant and the Space Shifters turn its innocence into a stormy epic, full of thunderous drums, howling guitars and cocksure vocals (the old fires still burn), ably joined by Chrissie hynde.
Carry Fire might have ended there, but Plant adds “heaven Sent”, a coda that puts the album’s lost-love theme in a wider context of heavenly blessings and brief lives, a tremulous torch ballad that hits the same bittersweet spot as “As Time Goes By”. Robert is still a mystic at heart, albeit a wry one. Carry Fire comes with the Old Welsh legend, ‘Enwog yth wnair, gair gyrddbwyll armes, telynores twyll’, which variously translates as ‘Your renown was won with clever words and a harpist’s deceit’. Too modest by half, Robert.
The coda sets the lostlove theme in a wider context of heavenly blessings… Plant is still a mystic at heart