Robert Plant & the Strange Sensation - Mighty Rearranger (Audio CD - 2005)

Apropos of its title, this unflaggingly riveting disc finds Robert Plant revisiting his Led Zeppelin roots, grabbing bits and pieces of deep blues, North African melodies, and shamanic mysticism, and putting them back together in slightly off-balance fashion. Plant's unmistakable serpentine moan is, naturally, at the core of the disc's dozen songs -- soaring particularly high into the stratosphere on the uplifting "Shine It All Around" -- but he's not shy about sharing the spotlight with the other members of his band, Strange Sensation. On "Brother Ray" -- a tribute to the late Ray Charles -- keyboardist John Baggott gets a chance to let loose with some stellar boogie-woogie piano, while the Moroccan-flavored "Another Tribe" showcases the spot-on tribal playing of drummer Clive Deamer. The latter song is one of several that find Plant abandoning his usual lyrical touchstones -- unfettered lust and otherworldly questing -- in favor of a solidly political stance. The most pronounced of those tracks is "Freedom Fries," a slithery jump blues that's redolent of Plant's Honeydrippers material, until the anti-imperialist screed really kicks in. Plant doesn't take things so far as to make fans worry that he's repositioned himself as a post-millennial protest singer -- the breathy "The Enchanter," for instance, is as sensual as anything he's done in his solo career -- but he does move in enough mercurial directions to confirm that even the most iconic artist is capable of some reinvention.

Condition:NEW. Drilled case

TRACK LISTINGS

1 Another Tribe / Robert Plant 3:16
2 Shine It All Around / Robert Plant 4:03
3 Freedom Fries / Robert Plant 2:52
4 Tin Pan Valley / Robert Plant 3:46
5 All the King's Horses / Robert Plant 4:19
6 The Enchanter / Robert Plant 5:27
7 Takamba / Robert Plant 4:05
8 Dancing in Heaven / Robert Plant 4:25
9 Somebody Knocking / Robert Plant 3:46
10 Let the Four Winds Blow / Robert Plant 4:52
11 Mighty Rearranger / Robert Plant 4:25
12 Brother Ray / Robert Plant 8:58