Robert Plant Mighty Rearranger CD

Composers: Robert Plant; John Baggot; Skin Tyson; Clive Deamer; Justin Adams .
Robert Plant & the Strange Sensation: Skin Tyson (acoustic guitar); Robert Plant (harmonica); Justin Adams (bass instrument); Billy Fuller (double bass); Clive Deamer (bendir); John Baggot (electronics).
Audio Remasterers: Dan Hersch; Bill Inglot; Raj Das.
Against all odds, Robert Plant, the ultimate '70s rock god, has consistently managed to remain artistically relevant throughout the decades of his post-Led Zeppelin career. In the 1980s he updated his sound to incorporate an almost new-wave sensibility on his solo albums, as well as turning the clock all the way back to the '50s with jump-blues band the Honeydrippers--hardly the stuff of "Kashmir."
While there are some echoes of Zep on MIGHTY REARRANGER (Bonhamesque whomping drums, Middle Eastern influences, transmogrified blues riffs), Plant isn't resting on his laurels here. The synth-filled "Tin Pan Valley" bears more of a relation to trip-hop than to blues-rock; "Brother Ray" is a quirky, lo-fi piano boogie; and for much of the album Plant veers toward the lower, more intimate end of his vocal range, largely eschewing the high-pitched wail that made him a superstar in bygone stadium-rock days. Plant is joined here by the musicians who helped make his covers album DREAMLAND such a worthy project, and it sounds like they managed to gel into a full-fledged band, giving their leader a solid framework to work his often-hypnotic magic.
On Mighty Rearranger, the core of the band Robert Plant showcased on 2002's Dreamland -- and named the Strange Sensation -- is a full-blown expanded lineup that shares the bill with him. Guitarists Justin Adams and Skin Tyson, drummer Clive Deamer, keyboardist John Baggot, and bassist Billy Fuller help Plant give listeners his most musically satisfying and diverse recording since, well, Led Zeppelin's Physical Grafitti. The reference is not a mere platitude to Plant's pedigree. The songs, production, and sequencing of the album overtly incorporates those sounds as well as those of Eastern modalism, Malian folk, guitar rock, R&B, and others, for inspiration -- and why shouldn't they? Mighty Rearranger opens with "Another Tribe," a sociopolitical ballad that touches upon the textural string backdrops from Zep's "Kashmir" and is fueled by Moroccan bendir drums. Adams' guitar shifts it over to rock in the middle, but never crowds the crystalline lilting vocal. The single, "Shine It All Around," sports Deamer's crunch and crack drums, while Adams' canny emulation of Jimmy Page's Les Paul toneography fills Plant's sung and moaned lines with ferocity. But it is "Freedom Fries," with its startling percussive syncopation and juxtaposition of roots rockabilly blues and hard rock -- à la "Black Dog" -- that breaks the record wide open and shatters the sensual tension with pure Dionysian RAWK swagger. On "Tin Pan Valley," Baggot's whispering keyboard lines under Plant's nocturnal moan set a mood -- slippery, sexy, undulating -- before Deamer cracks through with cymbal and snare work that not only emulates John Bonham, but evokes his power, unfurling the Zep talons deeper into the core of the album. The beautiful balladry of "All the King's Horses" offers solid proof of Plant's ability to reference the English folk tradition with elegance and taste, and his continued acumen for fine lyric writing. The acoustic guitars purposely kiss the same space that Page did on "Over the Hills and Far Away" and "Goin' to California," but are balanced by Adams' pastoral electric country fills. But here's the important part: the Zeppelin spirit that is seemingly ever present here takes nothing away from the startling imagination and creativity on Mighty Rearranger -- it actually serves, rather than houses, the songs it adorns. And it's the songs, like the sultry slow stroll of "The Enchanter" and the North African-flavored rocker "Takamba," that matter. Plant and Strange SensationRolling Stone (p.76) - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "[T]he North African influences and trip-hop touches are deployed in the service of thunderous blues-based rockers and pretty pastoral ballads....Plant's inner black dog is howling again."
Uncut (p.110) - 4 stars out of 5 - "A record of considerable depth, admirable adventure and surprising passion."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.60) - Ranked #19 in Mojo's "The 50 Best Albums Of 2005" - "[With] Arab strands, ZEP III pscyh-folk and Thor's hammer rock."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.92) - 4 stars out of 5 - "MIGHTY REARRANGER is arguably Plant's most Zeppelinesque solo work to date....Plant's determination not to rest on his laurels has served him well here..."