Robert Plant\u2019s interest in all genres of music is well known to everyone who has ever followed the singer\u2019s career, but once he was on his own, it took a while to really start exploring that. Plant\u2019s first three post-Zep albums (his two solo discs and the Honeydrippers project) seemed like baby steps at breaking out of the Led Zeppelin mold; it wasn\u2019t until his third disc, 1985\u2019s Shaken \u2018N\u2019 Stirred<\/i>, that the eclectic Plant began to surface.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say Shaken \u2018N\u2019 Stirred <\/i>is a great album. It\u2019s utterly reliant on mid-\u201880s synthesizers, electronics and a tinny sound that\u2019s hard to shake, but the songwriting is pretty different from what Plant had done before. The songs incorporate elements such as African rhythms, off-kilter time signatures, songs that inexplicably slow down or speed up and the general sense of non-commercial oddness associated with, say, Talking Heads. Other than \u201cLittle By Little,\u201d which plays it straight with this sound and was consequently a minor hit, this is an album of detours that takes some getting used to.<\/p>\n
\u201cHip To Hoo\u201d and \u201cKallalou Kallalou\u201d have some interesting ideas but falter as album openers, failing to achieve any kind of momentum \u2013 although the bridge of \u201cHip\u201d is pretty good, if reminiscent of what Genesis was doing around the same time. The darker \u201cTrouble Your Money\u201d is the first solid song, anchored by skittering drums, jazzy bass lines and the occasional guitar fill. It is made all the better because it arrives in the middle of the clanking, jerky \u201cPink And Black\u201d and \u201cToo Loud.\u201d The former completely apes the pounding drum riff of \u201cMy Sharona\u201d without apology and is big dumb fun.<\/p>\n
\u201cLittle By Little\u201d is surprisingly dense, bookended by a long introduction and Plant\u2019s repeated mantra of \u201cI can breathe again\u201d closing out the track, with a catchy six-note keyboard riff propelling the action forward in the middle. Unfortunately, things go downhill from here, with \u201cDoo Doo A Do Do\u201d (awful song titles this time out) and \u201cEasily Lead\u201d thudding messes with no real point or riffs to speak of, songs that have lots of sound but little ideas to cohere them. \u201cSixes And Sevens\u201d is better, closing the disc with the same sort of dark pop of \u201cTrouble Your Money.\u201d <\/p>\n
Shaken \u2018N\u2019 Stirred <\/i>works best when it is allowed to breathe, when Plant\u2019s ideas can take focus and not be inundated by the overweening synthesizers. Unfortunately, this doesn\u2019t happen nearly enough, leaving the album something of a noble disappointment. Plant wouldn\u2019t really venture down this synthesized guitar-free path again, leaving this as an album with a small handful of gems for fans willing to dig but little else to recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":32639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6421],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-44407","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\/44407","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\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44407"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}