'One More Cup of Coffee': Robert Plant song review of the day (No. 8 of 10)

Today's song is "One More Cup of Coffee," by Bob Dylan. Now, here's a song I'd been anticipating since the moment in February when I first heard the song was being recorded and even considered for a single. The thought that crossed my mind was that if the song were to be released as a single, the sound would have to be totally different from the original.

With all due respect to Mr. Dylan, the version on his January 1976 album, Desire, was about as uncommercial as one could get. It was nearly a dirge in a minor key with a poetic verse that requires one to ponder long before it makes any sense. It's not exactly lighthearted party music fit for commercial radio.

Dylan's even sounded unrehearsed in a few places. The violinist soloing in the opening bars obviously wasn't entirely sure of the chord changes, and that wasn't fixed by overdubbing. Dylan and backup singer Emmylou Harris obviously weren't reading from the same lyric sheet, and that wasn't fixed by overdubbing.

(Funnily enough, Plant left that second mistake intact at the end of his version, harmonizing with his own overdubbed second vocal line. With Plant's sense of humor, it's probably an intentional nod to Bob.)

On Plant's version, out goes the violin, and in come the electric guitars. He nudges the tempo just a bit so that the song doesn't drag. He sings it in the same key as the original, but instead of bellowing the lyrics as did his predecessor, Plant uses his raspy, breathy voice to ease through the verses. On the choruses, where he overdubbed his vocals to sing with himself, he alters the harmony from the original so that he doesn't have to sing in a female vocal range. Each chorus concludes with a full-band break preceding the last four words.

In these reviews, I've used words like "landscape" and "soundscape" so many times, I'm growing sick of it! But really, the Strange Sensation ought to be renamed the Smooth Sensation because the arrangements on these songs are perfectly smooth, swirling and textured. It will become such a cliche by the time I'm through reviewing each song, but that doesn't mean the album repeats itself at all. It's really an album that is worthy of being heard and thus enjoyed.

'Song to the Siren': Robert Plant song review of the day (No. 7 of 10)

This news originally appeared in an edition of the newsletter "On This Day In Led Zeppelin History."

Today's song is "Song to the Siren," the highlight from Tim Buckley's 1970 album, Starsailor. Plant missed that version of it the first time around; the first time he heard the song was the 1984 cover version by the U.K.'s This Mortal Coil. Plant was smitten.

Recalling some of his all-time favorite tracks for an article in the May 1990 issue of Q magazine, Plant said of "Song to the Siren": "I like the Tim Buckley original too, but I'll go with [This Mortal Coil's] version. It's so rewarding to hear it on U.S. college radio." Plant's still raving about the song this year, too. He said in a 2002 interview, "The haunting element of it, the lyrical content, it's so powerful."

For the last few years in his last two bands, Plant has performed the somber song as an encore, frequently closing shows with its peaceful yet intense textures. In the context of Dreamland, though, Plant sandwiches the song as the fifth track, between a bouncy original and a laid-back blues.

Buckley's album version and This Mortal Coil's attempt both approach the song in free form. The layered background sighs match each other. The electric guitar is less in the fore on the 1984 cover, with chords strummed once instead of arpeggiated over the vocal line. But the vocals on This Mortal Coil's version sound somewhat rushed, particularly toward the end.

Plant's new studio version opens with just acoustic guitar, definitely laying down a strict tempo to which Plant adheres. Plant's voice manages to escape all the labels with which he's been criticized: breathy, feathery, whiny, raspy, contrived. In a short break before the second verse, the sound of strings enters.

The arrangement through the verse remains slight but with a definite pulse rather than the free form of previous versions. By the end of the verse, a quiet electric guitar accompanies the arrangement.

A substantial instrumental break is added between the second and third verses, with cymbals being heard for the first time. A simple electric guitar solo energizes the break. The first half of the solo is all within five notes, and the second half seems to fade out before the final verse. Leading up to the track's high tide during the final verse is a light current of crashing cymbals.

Plant, whose singing has piled on a lot of influence from Meditteranean and Arabic singers, could have taken the opportunity to evoke some trills. The vocalist in This Mortal Coil relentlessly peppered the last line of each verse with trills. Showing restraint, Plant surprisingly limits his inflections in his six-minute version to the very last line, where the trills are effective.

I wonder if Plant has sat down and compared all three versions in a row. I did. And if he has, I wonder if he decided his takes the cake. I did.

'Funny in My Mind': Robert Plant song review of the day (No. 6 of 10)

This news originally appeared in an edition of the newsletter "On This Day In Led Zeppelin History."

Today's song is "Funny in My Mind (I Believe I'm Fixin' to Die)." The opening track on Dreamland, it can't really be classified into any single musical genre. Robert Plant refers to the first bit as "Cajun psychedelic zydeco." The album is introduced with an accordion sound. But, as Plant says, "Just when you think it's performing in one particular area, it drops down into some kind of dark, psychedelic moment, which... I don't think Bukka White had that in mind, but I think it's the way that you have to move blues along. I don't think the polite interpretation of blues in the carpeted concert hall is what blues was all about in the first place."

Plant describes the arrangement as "bouncy and confident." He says it necessarily has to be that way to keep it entertaining for everybody concerned, including himself. It definitely has a driving, upbeat rhythm that doesn't hesitate. Plant sings with force throughout the track. Between verses, the band kicks into several different figures.

As for the lyrics, they're trotted out from songs that have been in Plant's repertoire for decades. We've heard some of these lyrics in Led Zeppelin songs before. "Fixin' to Die" is a Bukka White blues whose lyrics were no stranger to Led Zeppelin in the live arena; the April 1, 1971 "Whole Lotta Love" live medley on BBC Sessions includes "Fixin' to Die." Some lyrics are also in "In My Time of Dying," namely "Tell my Jesus to make up my dying bed," as sung in the new track. (Bob Dylan's first album employed both "Fixin' to Die" and "In My Time of Dyin'.")

The fast-paced music in Plant's new arrangement is definitely entertaining. The track fades out just after reaching four-and-a-half minutes. But that's really where it's just beginning for the Strange Sensation, Plant recently said in a promotional interview.

He said, "You can probably hear the great future for this band lurking on the fade-outs of the tracks. For instance, the kind of improvisation at the end of ... 'Funny In My Mind' is the kind of playing you will experience in a full hour-and-30-minute show. There is a good communion of souls, there's a lot of great guitar-filigree going on, not on a blues base but in that kind of Indo-raga style of playing, somewhere between John Fahey, The Flaming Lips and the Electric Prunes."

Plant is nothing if not a musical connoisseur, and, best of all, he knows how to implement all his influences into his own music.

'Hey Joe': Robert Plant song review of the day (No. 5 of 10)

This news originally appeared in an edition of the newsletter "On This Day In Led Zeppelin History."

Today's song is "Hey Joe." It's a traditional song although sometimes credited to Billy Roberts. Other times, it's credited to the lead singer of Quicksilver Messenger Service -- Chet (or Chester) Powers, a.k.a. Jesse Oris Farrow, born as Dino Valenti.

Prior to the most famous cover version by the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1967, "Hey Joe" was covered and reshaped many times by bands including the Byrds, Love, the Leaves, the Shadows of Knight, the Music Machine and Tim Rose. Then came the Hendrix version, after which almost every cover of "Hey Joe" sounded mostly the same: Nearly all tried to sound like Hendrix! (Even Plant took a shot at it in the same year as Hendrix, recording a demo version in the Band of Joy with John Bonham on drums.)

But the new arrangement by Plant and the Strange Sensation is definitely different from any previous version. From the first note, that's obvious. Justin Adams' contribution is not on a guitar but a three-stringed Northern African instrument called the gimbri (and spelled various ways).

Conventional guitar? You'd better believe there's conventional guitar there too. Porl Thompson handles the electric guitar duties. Drawing from a lesson learned in the Jimmy Page technique, Thompson echoes some of Plant's higher vocal lines.

An underlying drone supports the verses while Plant sings the call-and-response lyrics. He told the BBC, "I made it sort of like a news broadcast, a sort of adventure in the middle of a drama. The musicians make it into this amazing soundscape."

"Hey Joe" sounds like a really good film score ("The Robert Blake Story," anyone?). The whole band leads the song into a very gradual crescendo, but what stands out most instrumentally are the drums. Throughout the buildup, Clive Deamer lays off and then sporadically inserts fills around Plant's vocal lines.

The drone of the verses finally gives way to a fortissimo peak. At that time, the band switches into the song's familiar rolling bassline, only uniquely played at lightning speed.

The instrumental break of this song is one of my two favorite moments on the entire album. At the end of it, Charlie Jones quotes from the descending bassline of "Dazed and Confused," whether intentional or not. I'll describe this song with only one more word. Exciting!

'Win My Train Fare Home': Robert Plant song review of the day (No. 4 of 10)

This news originally appeared in an edition of the newsletter "On This Day In Led Zeppelin History."

Today's song is "Win My Train Fare Home." It was given the working title of "If I Ever Get Lucky" when used to open Plant's live sets last year. I chose to review this song on June 16, the 33rd anniversary that Led Zeppelin recorded the blues-steeped "The Girl I Love." What these two tracks have in common is the way the singer handles his influences from the blues genre at large.

As long as Plant has been singing, he's been influenced by the blues. Through the years, he's spoken about bluesmen like Charley Patton, quoted from writers like Bukka White and covered entire songs by Willie Dixon. Over and over, Plant cites Chess recordings by Howlin' Wolf as some of the dearest to him.

The writing credit goes to Robert Plant and band, as well as the late Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, author of "If I Get Lucky" in the 1940s (another, later version of which is credited to J.B. Lenoir). But the lyrics in "Train Fare" are from more than one source; Plant compiled lyrics from some of the most honest blues songs, tracks that have endured in vinyl form on Plant's shelf. In addition to Crudup's "If I Get Lucky," Plant also quotes from "Key to the Highway" by Big Bill Broonzy, "Milkcow's Calf Blues" by Robert Johnson, "Crawling Kingsnake" by John Lee Hooker and "Levee Camp Moan" by Son House.

"Crawling Kingsnake" was a tune Plant used to sing in a band called the Crawling Kingsnakes; it was his first band with John Bonham. But probably most meaningful to Plant are the Crudup lyrics ("If I ever get lucky, mama, I'd win my train fare home..."). Thirty-four years ago, Plant could barely afford the transportation fare to go to Jimmy Page's boathouse to discuss the possible formation of Led Zeppelin. Needless to say, the 19-year-old singer ended up lucky and won his train fare home.

There's no question that this is the Delta blues. It's just that the delta might be beside some river on another planet. A plethora of guitars and keyboard instruments describe the landscape and atmosphere of the delta.

Charlie Jones plays an upright bass for this one and switches at will between plucking and bowing it. At the instrumental section, the interplay between guitar and bass is legendary. The guitar action itself is full of bluesy, bent notes, and Jones uncharacteristically explores the upper reaches of his fretless instrument like a true jazz bassist. This is one of my two favorite moments on the entire album.

During the break, I count four times Plant sings the Arabic word, "yallah," which means "Let's go." It's a word that entered Plant fans' vernacular first in 1994, when they titled a new Unledded track "Yallah" (retitled the next year as "The Truth Explodes").

The point is that Robert Plant is very enthusiastic about the blues and incorporating not just Arabic influences into it but also the unique contributions of his wonderful band. This song is a prime example of the diverse forces within the Strange Sensation flowing together to gel into one sound, or as Plant put it recently in an interview for BBC radio, a "mix of really astute and colorful musicians."

'Darkness, Darkness': Robert Plant song review of the day (No. 3 of 10)

This news originally appeared in an edition of the newsletter "On This Day In Led Zeppelin History."

Today's song is "Darkness, Darkness." The song was first released by the Youngbloods in 1968 (on the album Elephant Mountain and as the A-side of a single the following year). The original sounded almost Celtic in nature. Fiddles introduced the melody, and it was a tune that could have been danced to. On the original, recorded when fuzz-tone guitars were a popular staple, a hook vocal line at the end of the chorus was duplicated with a searing electric guitar.

Robert Plant's new version is much more somber than the original. There are no fiddles, and there's no dancing. Instead, there's anguish in his voice, as if he's truly feeling the lyrics: "Take away the pain of knowing; fill this emptiness with light." His performance is really convincing; you have to feel sorry for the guy! Fortunately, fans who put up with the moodiness of Led Zeppelin tracks like "No Quarter" and "I'm Gonna Crawl" should be able to stomach the feeling.

John Baggot initiates the track with a placid and deceptively warm electric piano. Then a delicate soundtrack underscores Robert's voice: Drummer Clive Deamer keeps the rhythm with a lone ride cymbal. A few brief lines later, chords strummed on acoustic guitar comes into the picture, followed quickly by bassist Charlie Jones nicely slipping into the mix. Then Deamer switches to a medium pulse on drums for the next verse.

Each stanza of lyric is met by an increase in intensity -- not necessarily in volume. If the mark of a good band is the recognition of the difference between volume and intensity, then Robert has a good band in the Strange Sensation.

After the first chorus, the electric guitar and bass experiment with some minor-ninth chords. Doing this leaves the song sounding intentionally open. The chords sound like they're initiating questions. Plant's singing seems to continue this. Reconstructing the Youngbloods' melody at the hook, he uses a few key notes from the Strange Sensation's interesting chord choice.

A few bars of Baggot vamping on electric piano precede just as many bars of an electric guitar solo. The guitar's sound benefits from heavy reverb and what sounds like an Octavizer effect. All the notes come from the Aeolian mode but for one instance of a flat five. It's tough to know whether that particular note was borrowed from a blues scale or imported from an Eastern scale. The beauty of the Strange Sensation is that it could really be either.

Instead of the song merely ending the way it came in, an enduring chord in the background comes to the fore, ushering in a heavy rock coda that continues for the next minute and through a very long fadeout. Among the tricks Robert pulls out during the final section are the "C'mon baby" rhythm he used on "Come into My Life" from his previous solo album -- itself a throwback to Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Mak'er." Plant also throws in some high notes that are reminiscent of the very early days of Led Zeppelin -- the same time the Youngbloods recorded this song. All in all, this song does a great tribute to the music and to the era.

'Last Time I Saw Her': Robert Plant song review of the day (No. 2 of 10)

This news originally appeared in an edition of the newsletter "On This Day In Led Zeppelin History."

Today's song is "Last Time I Saw Her." I chose to review this song right away because I thought there might be people who thought Dreamland was an album of all covers. Well, it's not. This track shows the creativity of Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation.

Plant deserves a lot of credit for his performance on this one. His voice may have changed a lot throughout his career, and his voice gets a lot of criticism for being breathy these days. Still, Plant never fails to conjure up vocal energy when it's needed. And this track is one of those times when he comes through with flying colors.

His performance in the upbeat verses of this track reminds me of the Presence track, "Hots on For Nowhere." He sounds like he's having some fun on this track, and with a great band behind him, how could he not be? The rhythm section lays down a funky, syncopated backbeat to support the song. Crazy effects from guitar and synthesizer show why this five-piece backing band might be called "the Strange Sensation" in the first place. Some of Plant's energy throughout the song could be attributed to the inspiring noises behind him.

When Porl Thompson spoke with Lemon Squeezings last month, he described his own guitar sound on the album as "over loud" and "uncontrolled." Well, that's only half of it! Does anybody remember laughter? Squeaks, growls, trills and howls are just some of the describable noises throughout the track. Then there are the indescribable ones, too; I won't even get started on them.

Plant himself gets into the groove with his own repeated words and phrases and improvised hollers. The song fades out with a battling exchange between guitar and keyboards. (I turned up the volume so I could hear the last sounds before they fades away completely; I won't spoil it for you which one wins.)

"You can probably hear the great future for this band lurking on the fade-outs of the tracks," Plant said recently. No kidding! But there's a lot to be heard within this dynamic four-and-three-quarter-minute track, and every second counts in Dreamland.