Robert Plant Dreamland CD

Personnel: Robert Plant (vocals); Justin Adams (guitar, ghimbri); Porl Thompson (guitar); B.J. Cole (pedal steel); John Baggott (keyboards); Charlie Jones (bass); Clive Deamer (drums, percussion); Raj Das, May Clee Cadman, Ginny Clee (background vocals).
DREAMLAND was nominated for the 2003 Grammy Awards for Best Rock Album. "Darkness, Darkness" was nominated for the 2003 Grammy Awards for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.
Personnel: Robert Plant (vocals); Porl Thompson (guitar); B.J. Cole (pedal steel guitar); John Baggot (keyboards); Clive Deamer (drums); Justin Adams (darabukka); Ginny Clee, Raj Das, May Clee Cadman (background vocals).
Audio Remasterers: Dan Hersch; Bill Inglot; Raj Das.
At their best, cover albums have a strange way of galvanizing an artist by returning to the songs that inspired them; the artists can find the reason why they made music in the first place, perhaps finding a new reason to make music. Robert Plant's Dreamland -- his first solo album in nearly ten years and one of the best records he's ever done, either as a solo artist or as a member of Led Zeppelin -- fulfills that simple definition of a covers album and goes beyond it, finding Plant sounding reinvigorated and as restless as a new artist. Part of the reason why this album works so well is that he has a new band -- not a group of supporting musicians, but a real band whose members can challenge him because they tap into the same eerie, post-folk mysticism that fueled Led Zeppelin III, among other haunting moments in the Zep catalog. Another reason why this album works so well is that it finds the band working from a similar aesthetic point as classic Zeppelin, who, at their peak, often reinterpreted and extrapolated their inspirations, piecing them together to create something startlingly original. That's the spirit here, most explicitly on the blues medley "Win My Train Fare Home (If I Ever Get Lucky)," but also throughout the record, as he offers radical reinventions of such cult favorites as Bob Dylan's "One More Cup of Coffee," Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren," and the Youngbloods' "Darkness, Darkness," along with such staples as "I Believe I'm Fixin' to Die" and "Hey Joe." What's amazing about this album is that it is as adventurous and forward-thinking -- perhaps even more so -- as anything he's ever done. He's abandoned the synthesizers that distinguished each of his solo albums and replaced them with a restless, searching band that pushes every one of these songs past conventional expectations (and, in the case of the two strong originals, they make the new tunes sound as one with the covers). Dreamland rarely sounds like Led Zeppelin, but its spirit is pure Zeppelin; this, in a sense, is what he was trying to do with the Page and Plant albums -- find a way back into the mystic by blending folk, worldbeat, blues, rock, and experimentalism into music that is at once grounded in the past and ceaselessly moving forward. He might have co-authored only two pieces here, but Dreamland is a fully realized product of his own vision -- as unpredictable and idiosyncratic, as fulfilling and full of mystery as anything he's ever released. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
While there's nothing particularly retro about the proceedings on DREAMLAND, Robert Plant's first solo album of the 21st century finds him reaching back to his roots. This entails not so much a return to the turbo-blues bombast of Led Zeppelin, but a look even further back to the country blues that inspired the young, pre-Zep Plant, and to the kind of psych-folk troubadours whose magic filled the air when "Stairway to Heaven" was just a gleam in Jimmy Page's eye.
Towards this end, Plant deconstructs/reconstructs old blues tunes such as "Fixin' To Die" and "Win My Train Fare Home" as well as tackling material by the likes of Tim Buckley (the shimmering "Song to the Siren," Skip Spence (the Moby Grape-era "Skip's Song"), and Bob Dylan (a Middle Eastern-tinged take on "Rolling Stone (8/8/02, p.77) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...This album will not disappoint if you prefer Plant in ballad mode...his restraint is what ultimately illuminates this album, from the tart take on Dylan's 'One More Cup Of Coffee' to the lovely, elegiac cover of Skip Spence's 'Skip's Song'."
Uncut (1/03, p.95) - Ranked #18 in Uncut's "100 Best Albums of the Year"
Uncut (8/02, p.115) - 4 out of 5 - "...He's still got the voice...a pleasingly psychedelic edge....a fine collection..."
CMJ (7/22/02, p.14) - "...Some of the best music Plant has recorded since his Zep heyday."
Mojo (Publisher) (7/02, p.96) - "...Plant revisits where his head was at in '67 [before Led Zep]...he belongs in the English Romantic tradition and...he's also half in love easeful death, a darkling mood much explored herein..."