With the release of his fourth solo album
\nNow And Zen<\/i>, former Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant
\nseemed to recapture some of the magic he once shared with his
\nformer bandmates — not surprising, seeing that Jimmy Page guested
\non two tracks.<\/p>\n
But when it came time to record the follow-up album, Plant
\nseemed like he wanted to try to hold onto that magic without
\nrelying on his past. The end result,
\nManic Nirvana<\/i>, proved one thing – he couldn’t. This is a
\nweak effort that nearly reduces Plant to a bad Zeppelin clone,
\nthough he does hold out some promise towards the end.<\/p>\n
To be honest, I had forgotten how much I disliked this album,
\nhaving not listened to it in well over four years. The lead-off
\ntrack (and first single), “Hurting Kind (I’ve Got My Eyes On You),”
\nis indicative of how much trouble this album is in from the get-go.
\nSounding suspiciously like a re-tread of “Tall Cool One” from
\nNow And Zen<\/i>, Plant and company lay down a half-hearted
\nattempt at rock while Plant moans and wails like an alley cat hit
\nby a car. Memo to Plant: this schtick worked when you were 20.<\/p>\n
Plant can’t even help but to dig up the bones of the past on
\n“Your Ma Said You Cried In Your Sleep Last Night,” lifting a
\nportion of the first verse from Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” — good
\ngrief! For an artist who was so cutting-edge at the start of his
\nsolo career because he turned his back on the ghosts of Led
\nZeppelin, he’s sure making up for lost time now… and it’s just
\nnot working.<\/p>\n
Take tracks like “SSS&Q,” “Tie Die On The Highway,” “I
\nCried” and “Big Love,” and add them to this mixture, and it really
\nseems like
\nManic Nirvana<\/i> is headed towards the great cosmic dumper.
\nFortunately for Plant, he is able to pull two miracles out of his
\nopen-shirted sleeve right at the end.<\/p>\n
The first comes in the all-too-brief “Liar’s Dance,” a
\nvocal-and-acoustic-guitar number which breaks loose from the
\nself-plagiarizing activities of Plant’s two most-current albums at
\nthe time, and allows Plant the freedom to truly emit as a vocalist.
\n(It also showed the path he was going to start treading on his
\nfuture album
\nFate Of Nations<\/i>… but we’re getting ahead of ourselves
\nnow.)<\/p>\n
The second comes in the album’s closing track, “Watching You”.
\nIt returns to a rock beat, but coming off of “Liar’s Dance,” this
\none seems to have a little more originality injected into it, and
\nit works better. Where were these tracks a half-hour ago, I found
\nmyself wondering.<\/p>\n
I fully understand Plant’s past, and I realize that he’d be a
\nfool to deny it throughout the length of his solo career. But
\nManic Nirvana<\/i> proves that the good ol’ days of Led Zeppelin
\nwere, at the time of this release, 10 years behind Plant, and it
\nmight have been a good idea to let those days finally go after
\nexorcising them on
\nNow And Zen<\/i>. Instead,
\nManic Nirvana<\/i> sounds like an album of
\nNow And Zen<\/i> rejects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6421],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-36768","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-robert-plant","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36768"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36768"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}