Robert Plant, ‘Saving Grace’: Album Review

Robert Plant’s 21st-century rebirth has left most, if not all, of his 1970s rock peers looking desperate and vain in their attempts to replicate the success of their golden years. Beginning with 2007’s Raising Sand, the Grammy-winning collaboration with American bluegrass artist Alison Krauss, the former Golden God and voice of Led Zeppelin shifted away from the hard-rock sound of his youth to explore roots music from around the world.

For almost two decades, he’s continued this path, from Americana (2010’s Band of Joy) to world (Lullaby and … the Ceaseless Roar, 2014) to folk (2017’s Carry Fire). His previous album, Raise the Roof, from 2021, was a return trip with Krauss. All of them have been terrific journeys. His 12th solo album, not counting his collaborations with Krauss, is named after his latest band, Saving Grace; the West Midlands, England-based Plant has performed with the local quintet since shortly before the pandemic hit.

With its Americana mix of folk and blues, Saving Grace recalls Band of Joy’s similar blend featuring Plant’s partner at the time, singer Patty Griffin, and Nashville-based guitarist Buddy Miller. But Saving Grace — singer Suzi Dian, drummer Oli Jefferson, guitarist Tony Kelsey, banjo and string player Matt Worley, and cellist Barney Morse-Brown — brings a more European aesthetic to their take on American roots. And like its predecessors, the album proves the 77-year-old Plant to be one of the few artists of his vintage who refuses to rest on his laurels.

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As with Raising Sand, Band of Joy and Raise the Roof, Saving Grace is an album of interpretations; in addition to a handful of traditional numbers, Plant and the band cover songs by Moby Grape (“It’s a Beautiful Day Today”), Blind Willie Johnson (“Soul of a Man”) and the Minneapolis indie band Low. This Plant favorite had a pair of their songs covered on Band of Joy; here, 2005’s “Everybody’s Song” is a galloping, atmospheric highlight, with the singer excavating the track’s dark corners to face mortality in its lyrics: The lines “All your dreams are waking up / … You can’t live forever” are even more poignant following the death of Low drummer Mimi Parker in 2022, after which the group disbanded.

Other standout tracks include the slow-build six minutes of the traditional “As I Roved Out,” relocated to modern Americana; “Gospel Plough”‘s sullen field gospel featuring chirping birds; and dusty-blues album opener “Chevrolet,” which reworks Donovan’s 1965 B-side “Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness),” an adaptation of the 1930 song “Can I Do It for You” by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy, who recorded the original version of the Led Zeppelin classic “When the Levee Breaks” in 1929. Saving Grace, the album and the band, are about tradition and pulling it forward — from Plant’s harmonica that roars through 2000s singer-songwriter Martha Scanlan’s “Higher Rock” to his democratic sharing of lead vocal duties on a few songs. By looking to the past again, Plant continues to secure his ever-evolving legacy.