Robert Plant – Saving Grace Music CD

Review

With Saving Grace, Robert Plant is taking the opportunity to engage in one of his periodic, post-Zeppelin looks in the rear view. This isn't to say Saving Grace—the name of Plant's new album and his new band—is a rehash, it is not, but it is an acknowledgment that the singer, at 77, seems to be taking at least a little bit of stock in what came before as he did on Now and Zen and with his Page and Plant and Band of Joy projects.

With co-lead vocalist Suzi Dian playing a prominent role and Tony Kelsey (guitar), Matt Worley (banjo and strings), Barney Morse-Brown (cello) and Oli Jefferson (drums) being masterful purveyors of moody, atmospheric accompaniment, Saving Grace is what Plant's collaborations with Alison Krauss would've sounded like if staked to the East. Plant, meanwhile, sneaks in coy references to Led Zeppelin recordings on "As I Roved Out" and "Too Far from You" that, though sly, are not so esoteric as to get lost.

As these traditional and Sarah Siskind titles suggest, Saving Grace is a covers album. It is also a band record, as Worley takes lead vocals on Blind Willie Johnson's "Soul of a Man;" Plant sings their wispy arrangement of "I Never Will Marry" from a female perspective; and the musicians manage to make contemporary compositions like Low's "Everybody's Song" fit comfortably alongside the traditional "Gospel Plough" with musical arrangements that defy time and space.

If Plant were to stop here, Saving Grace could serve as an ideal wrap on one of rock's most essential and eclectic careers. Given his propensity for moving forward, he won't stop, leaving the album as a 2025 mile marker along Plant's long, twisting aural road.

— Kristopher Weiss, jambands.com

Product Details

Robert Plant announces the release of Saving Grace: the first album featuring the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer’s new band of distinguished players, which he calls “a song book for the lost and found.” Arriving September 26 on Nonesuch Records, the genesis of Saving Grace began during a lockdown spent in “The Shire,” when Plant’s customary wandering was all but forbidden. While his recent adventures have centred around Nashville, having reunited with Alison Krauss for 2021’s chart-topping, multi GRAMMY-nominated Raise The Roof, it was in the English countryside that Robert Plant connected closely to this diverse group of musicians, who through their own experiences had a shared leaning towards his much-loved corners of evocative song. Together, Plant and Saving Grace – vocalist Suzi Dian, drummer Oli Jefferson, guitarist Tony Kelsey, banjo and string player Matt Worley, cellist Barney Morse-Brown – have spent the past six years growing into a wide-ranging workshop of styles and personalities, weaving through time and circumstance with joy and abandon. Saving Grace breathes fresh life into a collection of centuries-old music arranged by Robert Plant, Saving Grace and Sam Amidon, as well as more recent treasures by Memphis Minnie, Bob Mosley (Moby Grape), Blind Willie Johnson, The Low Anthem, Martha Scanlan, Sarah Siskind and Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk’s Low.