When I was a little boy, I remember looking through my Aunt Ann\u2019s records that were stored at my grandparents\u2019 house. For some reason, I was always confused when I came to Houses Of The Holy<\/i>, the fifth release from Led Zeppelin \u2013 probably because I didn\u2019t know what to make of all those weird-colored naked children. My aunt always said she loved the song \u201cOver The Hills And Far Away,\u201d thanks to the opening guitar licks from Jimmy Page.<\/p>\n
When I became older and achieved Buddha nature, I learned what Led Zeppelin was all about, and discovered the music behind the funky album cover. Coming off what was a career-defining song with \u201cStairway To Heaven,\u201d Led Zeppelin dared to release an album that was their<\/i> music on their<\/i> terms, and didn\u2019t really give a lick whether you liked it or not.<\/p>\n
The end result was an album that, despite having certain songs played to death on classic rock radio, still remains some of the band\u2019s best work ever.<\/p>\n
It is that oversaturation of some of the tracks that can cause a listener to totally miss just how important songs like \u201cOver The Hills And Far Away,\u201d \u201cThe Rain Song,\u201d and \u201cThe Song Remains The Same\u201d really were. Mind you, this was the era of progressive rock, so mastery of an instrument was nothing new in the scene. But the way that the band (guitarist Page, bassist John Paul Jones, drummer John Bonham, and vocalist Robert Plant) so layered these songs to create more of an experience showed that Led Zeppelin was truly on top of their game. (One could argue, though, that this process was started with \u201cStairway To Heaven,\u201d or even as early as \u201cDazed And Confused,\u201d and I wouldn\u2019t disagree.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Rain Song\u201d was the track that completely shattered any prior conceptions that people had about Led Zeppelin \u2013 a song not driven by blistering guitar solos from Page, but by a neo-symphonic melody complemented by keyboard work from Jones. It was one of the richest songs Zeppelin ever recorded, and I would argue that it is one of their top five songs, second only to \u201cStairway To Heaven\u201d. Not quite as strong, but ambitious in its scope (and somewhat successful), \u201cNo Quarter\u201d is another track that dares to shake your belief in what you think Led Zeppelin is or should be. This one doesn\u2019t get nearly the airplay that it should, and seeing that \u201cThe Rain Song\u201d gets time on classic rock radio, length is not the issue here.<\/p>\n
But as serious as Houses Of The Holy<\/i> can be, it also showed that the lads knew how to have some fun with their work. Listen to \u201cThe Crunge\u201d and tell me that this wasn\u2019t Led Zeppelin completely cutting loose and nearly slapping the face of the serious atmosphere they had created with the album\u2019s three previous songs. Jones\u2019s keyboard work here is a portent of what one would hear six years later on In Through The Out Door<\/i>. Likewise, \u201cThe Ocean\u201d\u2019s faint vocal lead-in \u2013 I never figured this out, was that Bonham shouting in the background? \u2013 dares to suggest that Zeppelin was declaring that they were going to end this album the way they started it: on their own terms. Good thing they knew what they were doing, because it works.<\/p>\n
Yet there is one song on this disc I have never been able to get into \u2013 namely, \u201cD\u2019yer Mak\u2019er.\u201d From the pseudo-reggae groove that drives the song to the laid-back delivery of most of Plant\u2019s vocals, even to one of the most uninspired solos Page ever laid down on tape, this track is one that has always fallen flat to my ears. Still, one out of eight ain\u2019t bad.<\/p>\n
If I had taken the time to get past the freaky cover art (which, legend has it, looks that way due to a printing error) when I was younger, I might have gotten into Led Zeppelin a lot earlier than I did. While I still maintain that \u201cStairway To Heaven\u201d is the ultimate rock song \u2013 no matter how many times I hear it, I have yet to tire of it \u2013 you could make a very strong case that Houses Of The Holy<\/i> should be the first Led Zeppelin album that someone new to Zeppelin should purchase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5700],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-42517","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-led-zeppelin","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42517","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=42517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42517"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}