Robert Plant – ‘Saving Grace’ album review: Still got the blues
Quick question: What role does Robert Plant play in music?
Sure, he’s a singer, but the version of him that exists today is far from the kind of rock and roll messiah that over half of the rock community sees him as for the rest of time. He has all the trappings that make for a great rock and roll frontman, but on his latest record, he reminds everyone about why he was always best when singing the blues in all of its forms.
Then again, Saving Grace didn’t come together by accident. His entire musical persona has been about moving away from everyone’s expectations of what you would expect out of ‘Percy’, and thanks to his stellar collaborations with Alison Krauss, this record is the amalgamation of everything that he worked on with those records. It sees him bringing some bluesy swagger to classic songwriting styles.
When he’s singing tunes like ‘Soul of A Man’, he still has those impressive harmonica chops he had back in the day, but the years of him playing mellow music have only made people miss moments like ‘Gospel Plough’. But even though Plant has a hand in arranging many of the tunes, no one should really expect the likes of ‘Big Log’ or even the Walking Into Clarksdale-style singing.
If anything, this is the closest that Plant will probably get to making a “standards” album in the same vein as Paul McCartney or Rod Stewart did. He was never going to be singing old Sinatra tunes or anything like that, so it’s only natural to go back to that deep well of blues tunes with a more organic texture to them.
Some of them are admittedly a little downbeat, like ‘The Higher Rock’, but even where Plant falters, the band behind him is absolutely stellar at creating a mood. ‘Everybody’s Song’ already has a spectral tone to it the minute that Plant comes in, but the brilliant acoustic guitars and banjos scattered throughout the mix bring almost a hint of traditional American bluegrass.
Despite his denial of being a founder of heavy metal, the Saving Grace band behind him is what heavy metal musicians would have played had they been raised on Johnny Cash. And special attention needs to be paid to Suzi Dian, who is one of the finest vocalists Plant could have asked for as a substitute for someone like Krauss.
But Plant himself is still fantastic years on from even the Raising Sand days. His version of ‘It’s A Beautiful Day Today’ is absolutely gorgeous, and ‘I Will Never Marry’ is the kind of melancholy that not even his former band could have reached back in the day. Then again, it’s about time that we acknowledge the mothership-shaped elephant in the room.
Would Led Zeppelin be itching for a reunion hearing this? Absolutely, but this feels far more in line with what Plant wants to do with his career, even if he has some of his old mannerisms from back in the day. That was only one single part of his life, and while he is grateful to have gone through the heights that no one else could have imagined, he sounds equally as good embracing his inner hippie.
If you want tunes that are more in line with Led, feel free to pick up one of the copycats, but for me, Plant will always be better when he’s following his muse. Anyone can have nostalgic memories of tunes like ‘Tangerine’ or ‘The Battle of Evermore’ listening to this kind of album, but it’s always better to have the Neil Young approach and give the people what they didn’t realise they needed.
The crowd pleaser – ‘It’s A Beautiful Day Today’: As much as Plant destroys all of the bluesy numbers on the record, this feels most in line with the kind of music that he made back in the day, with a more tuneful twist to it. He can be heralded as a ‘Golden God’ all he wants, but at the end of the day, he’s still the same hippy that started The Band of Joy.
For fans of – The earthy side of Led Zeppelin III, those hippies that still remember the 1960s, and anyone who wishes that their bluegrass and country music sounded like it was being played in the underworld.
Release Date: September 26th, 2025 | Producer: Robert Plant and Saving Grace | Label: Nonesuch
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