Record Reviews
📝 2096 reviews| Artist | Title | Review |
|---|---|---|
| Led Zeppelin | Led Zepplin II | <P>Recorded quickly during Led Zeppelin's first American tours, Led Zeppelin II provided the blueprint for all the heavy metal bands that followed it. Since the group could only enter the studio for brief amounts of time, most of the songs that compose II are reworked blues and rock & roll standards that the band was performing on-stage at the time. Not only did the short amount of time result in a lack of original material, it made the sound more direct. Jimmy Page still provided layers of guitar overdubs, but the overall sound of the album is heavy and hard, brutal and direct. "Whole Lotta Love," "The Lemon Song," and "Bring It on Home" are all based on classic blues songs -- only, the riffs are simpler and louder and each song has an extended section for instrumental solos. Of the remaining six songs, two sport light acoustic touches ("Thank You," "Ramble On"), but the other four are straight-ahead heavy rock that follows the formula of the revamped blues songs. While Led Zeppelin II doesn't have the eclecticism of the group's debut, it's arguably more influential. After all, nearly every one of the hundreds of Zeppelin imitators used this record, with its lack of dynamics and its pummeling riffs, as a blueprint.</P>— <B>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</B> |
| Led Zeppelin | Led Zepplin IV | <p>Encompassing heavy metal, folk, pure rock & roll, and blues, Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album is a monolithic record, defining not only Led Zeppelin but the sound and style of '70s hard rock. Expanding on the breakthroughs of III, Zeppelin fuse their majestic hard rock with a mystical, rural English folk that gives the record an epic scope. Even at its most basic -- the muscular, traditionalist "Rock and Roll" -- the album has a grand sense of drama, which is only deepened by Robert Plant's burgeoning obsession with mythology, religion, and the occult. Plant's mysticism comes to a head on the eerie folk ballad "The Battle of Evermore," a mandolin-driven song with haunting vocals from Sandy Denny, and on the epic "Stairway to Heaven." Of all of Zeppelin's songs, "Stairway to Heaven" is the most famous, and not unjustly. Building from a simple fingerpicked acoustic guitar to a storming torrent of guitar riffs and solos, it encapsulates the entire album in one song. Which, of course, isn't discounting the rest of the album. "Going to California" is the group's best folk song, and the rockers are endlessly inventive, whether it's the complex, multi-layered "Black Dog," the pounding hippie satire "Misty Mountain Hop," or the funky riffs of "Four Sticks." But the closer, "When the Levee Breaks," is the one song truly equal to "Stairway," helping give IV the feeling of an epic. An apocalyptic slice of urban blues, "When the Levee Breaks" is as forceful and frightening as Zeppelin ever got, and its seismic rhythms and layered dynamics illustrate why none of their imitators could ever equal them.</p><p>— <strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p><hr/><p>With Led Zeppelin, there was no break-in period, no "early phase" where they figured out what kind of band they wanted to be. They were fully formed from the first repetition of the "Good Times Bad Times" riff, and they powered along through their first half-dozen albums crushing everything in their path. Zep never had their Sgt. Pepper's, their Exile, their Who's Next, because every album was more or less that good—for a while, anyway. This was a band that knew the music it wanted to make and executed it with ruthless precision. The second trio of Led Zeppelin reissues (the fourth album and Houses of the Holy came out last fall, Physical Graffiti this week) found the band inhabiting what Neil Tennant once described (and Tom Ewing fleshed out) as their "imperial phase." Riding on their massive initial success, and pushed even further by the game-changing success of "Stairway to Heaven", everything they tried during these years somehow worked.</p><p>If you grew up on classic rock radio, you sometimes felt like you were listening to Led Zeppelin's fourth album on shuffle. It has eight songs, all of them are huge, and one, "Stairway to Heaven", frequently lingers near the top of lists of the Greatest Rock Songs of All Time. Given its place in culture, IV can seem like an album of moments more than songs. Individual parts have been selected, cropped, amplified, and dropped into both songs by other artists and into our collective unconscious. Every song has two or three sections that are instantly identifiable and always seem to be playing somewhere nearby. The circular guitar figure in "Black Dog"; the chiming mandolin in "Going to California"; Bonham's cymbal bashing on "Rock and Roll". It's hard to hear "When the Levee Breaks", by now, and not think of hip-hop. If Led Zeppelin's music formed the DNA of anything that could remotely be called "hard rock," IV is a petri dish overflowing with stem cells. The debut was darker and moodier, II was heavier, and III was prettier, but the fourth album is a triumph of form meeting function.</p><p>"Stairway to Heaven" is so ubiquitous that it cycles through phases of deep reverence and self-parody, and the movement between these two poles is so rapid it all becomes a blur. This happens both for individual listeners (I'm going to guess the very young still discover this song and have their idea of what a rock song can be expanded considerably) and on the level of mass culture. It's both a marker of religion and an instant punchline, a singularity that sucks in a world of experience and observation and jeering laughter and sincere tears and compacts it all into an infinitely dense point. Like many who both love it and hate it, I pretty much never need to hear it again. But "Stairway" aside, IV is their least weird album. It's basically their stab at perfection, and they get there, but this band was always at its most interesting at the margins, when they had the possibility of failure.</p><p>By 1973, Zeppelin's only competition for Biggest Band in the World was the Stones, who were losing their hunger. Later that year, the Stones would put out Goat's Head Soup, beginning a period of drift they wouldn't return from until 1978's Some Girls. The field was clear, with the '60s starting to recede in the rearview, but punk was still a couple of years away, Zeppelin didn't waste the opportunity. Houses of the Holy, their fifth album in four years, takes the most powerful moments of the fourth album and amplifies them, and also adds some oddball experiments that flesh out the Led Zeppelin story.</p><p>They are most in the zone on "Over the Hills and Far Away", which is on a very short list of best songs Zep ever wrote, which is to say that it's among the best rock songs ever written. Everything they ever did well—pastoral beauty, crunchy riffs, stop/start changes, monster drum grooves—could be found on this single track. "The Ocean" features what could be Jimmy Page's single greatest riff. "The Rain Song" is a masterful study in the power of guitar tone, both for its full acoustic strumming and the electric guitar work that has always evoked the weather of its title. John Paul Jones' gorgeous Mellotron passage is one of the definitive uses of that strange instrument. And "No Quarter" is a disorienting bad-vibes epic, archetypal of the '70s, capturing the bleak interiority of a certain kind of drug experience.</p><p>Houses of the Holy is a perfectly reasonable choice for best Zeppelin LP, even if it had signs that the band couldn't last forever. "The Song Remains the Same" is the first sign of Robert Plant using a more pinched sound for his upper register, adapting to that gradually disappearing top octave by contorting his vocals into a strange squeal. By the last two Zeppelin records this would be his default approach when singing in this range. "The Crunge" is a sour version of funk, a weirdly fascinating half-song complete with a groaner of a James Brown joke. John Bonham supposedly disliked "D'yer Mak'er" so much he refused to write an interesting drum part, sticking instead with the first shuffle beat that came to mind. It was Zeppelin's stab at reggae, and though they never try to breathe any space or light into the mix, it's impossible to dismiss the song's easy catchiness, its affection for doo-wop melody, the motion of Page's spindly guitar.</p><p>Houses of the Holy might be Zeppelin's most impressive album on a purely sonic level, and this particular remaster reinforces that notion. The best remastering jobs always offer a subtle improvement—a touch of EQing here, a bit more volume there without overdoing it. Taken together, they hopefully offer more detail, and these versions make the grade. The bonus discs, however, continue to be disappointing. From one angle, there's actually something admirable about how little Led Zeppelin left in the vaults. It was a testament to their brutal efficiency as a rock machine. But aside from the live set released with the debut, the bonus discs so far have been the definition of "fans only."</p><p>They are mostly filled with "alternate mixes," which is a strange concept. Mixes freeze in time a single moment that is the end result of many individual decisions; they document fader settings. Alternate mixes showing what could have happened are literally infinite; all these mixes are said to have been created while the album was being mixed, and there is no reason to doubt that, but the truth is Page could just as easily make an "alternate mix" of any one of these songs this morning and no one would know the difference. The fact that a mandolin was briefly considered to be slightly louder for a given sound is basically a stray fact and nothing more. All it provides is a chance to hear familiar performances in familiar songs in a way that sounds slightly unfamiliar.</p><p>Among the first six records, aside from III, Physical Graffiti suffers least from overfamiliarity. It's Led Zeppelin's White Album, the one they made when they were at their creative peak and had a million ideas, but were also under a tremendous amount of strain and saw the end starting to come into focus. It's also, to my ears, their best album, even if it's not as unified or complete as some of what had come before. Why their best? First of all, there's more of it. The previous two albums were awesome, but each had just eight songs; Physical Graffiti has 15. It's math—when you are talking about songs from this period of the band, that makes it roughly twice as good.</p><p>But Physical Graffiti is Zeppelin's best album ultimately because it felt like a culmination. In some senses it was literally so, since its tracks had been recorded over the course of the previous few years and, in some cases, were leftovers from the previous few records. (The best of the new material was still too much for a single record, so they went back to unreleased songs and decided to flesh out a full 2xLP. The songs are all over the place, but the band makes it all work together.)</p><p>Iconic riffs abound—"Custard Pie", "The Wanton Song", and "Houses of the Holy" alone have more hooks than most rock bands manage in a career—but here they are just the beginning of the story. "In My Time of Dying" is Zeppelin's ultimate blues deconstruction, mixing the open-chord slide of acoustic Delta blues with electric heaviness and extending the whole thing past 11 minutes. Pastoral instrumentals had been in the mix for Zeppelin since the first album's "Black Mountainside", but Page never managed another one as beautiful as "Bron-Yr-Aur", a crushingly brief two minutes of guitar bliss that every rock kid who picked up an acoustic guitar in the next 10 years dreamed of playing. And their non-Western dabbling crested with "Kashmir". But Physical Graffiti's greatest strength is its looseness and general sense of playfulness. Here and there, Zeppelin showed comfort with pop. The bounce of "Trampled Under Foot" owes everything to Stevie Wonder; "Down By the Seaside" has an easeful lilt; and "Night Flight" twinkles with a bright optimism.</p><p>The song I returned to most here is also the simplest—"Boogie With Stu", an interpolation of Ritchie Valens' "Ooh My Head" (his mother gets a songwriting credit). It makes me think of what blues and early rock'n'roll meant to a certain generation of young men growing up in England during the 1950s and '60s. You hear one story after another about lives being changed by a rock'n'roll record. In a famous quote, John Lennon summed up his musical taste to Jann Wenner in a 1971 Rolling Stone interview: "Sounds like 'Wop Bop a Loo Bop'. I like rock and roll, man, I don't like much else."</p><p>When the members of Led Zeppelin get together with famed session pianist/long-time pal Ian Stewart on "Boogie With Stu", you can hear five people who speak the same language. It's drunk on the joy of the discovery. Whatever else they have going on in their lives, they can sit down and play a chugging 12-bar song and have a fucking ball, because they remember when they first heard a song like this as kids and realized that song was a portal to another world. On Physical Graffiti, the end point of Led Zeppelin's incomparable initial run, they are living deep inside that new world, still finding new things to discover, taking it all in.</p><p>— <strong>Mark Richardson, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
| Led Zeppelin | BBC Sessions | <p>Led Zeppelin's BBC sessions were among the most popular bootleg items of the rock & roll era, appearing on a myriad of illegal records and CDs. They were all the more popular because of the lack of official Led Zeppelin live albums, especially since The Song Remains the Same failed to capture the essence of the band. For anyone who hadn't heard the recordings, the mystique of Zeppelin's BBC sessions was somewhat mystifying, but the official 1997 release of the double-disc BBC Sessions offered revelations for any fan who hadn't yet heard this music. While some collectors will be dismayed by the slight trimming on the "Whole Lotta Love Medley," almost all of the group's sessions are included here, and they prove why live Zeppelin was the stuff of legend. The 1969 sessions, recorded shortly after the release of the first album, are fiery and dynamic, outstripping the studio record for sheer power. Early versions of "You Shook Me," "Communication Breakdown," "What Is and What Should Never Be," and "Whole Lotta Love" hit harder than their recorded counterparts, while covers of Sleepy John Estes' "The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair," Robert Johnson's "Travelling Riverside Blues," and Eddie Cochran's "Something Else" are welcome additions to the Zeppelin catalog, confirming their folk, blues, and rockabilly roots as well as their sense of vision. Zeppelin's grand vision comes into sharper relief on the second disc, which is comprised of their 1971 sessions. They still have their primal energy, but they're more adventurous, branching out into folk, twisted psychedelia, and weird blues-funk. Certainly, BBC Sessions is the kind of album that will only appeal to fans, but anyone who's ever doubted Zeppelin's power or vision will be set straight with this record.</p><p>— <strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p><hr/><p>Maybe you're the person who hasn't quite made up their mind up about Led Zeppelin. That's fine but fair warning, the band is the apotheosis of overstuffed arena rock, from private jets to strong-arming managers to personal excess in every musical, sexual, and philosophical front. Lester Bangs wanted to chuck pies at them in defense of Truth and/or Iggy Pop. Hammer of the Gods depicted them as decadent goons and tried to make that seem admirable. Yo La Tengo's "Sugarcube" video, without even needing to name them, reduced their lyrical and aesthetic sensibilities to an interest in "where the hobbits dwell." If you're a young music head who shuns rockism, appropriation, and womanizing as loathsome retrograde traits to be avoided, being into Zep means your faves don't come more problematic.</p><p>Still, rock dorks were tangling with this issue long before any of us, and in the context of reckoning with Led Zeppelin—especially as an oft-bootlegged yet still elusive live-band document—the official two-disc release of *BBC Sessions *in 1997 felt like a moment of clarity. Rhino's 2016 reissue of the *BBC Sessions *is also a big important musical-legacy package deal, and justifiably so: Jimmy Page supervised a new remaster in the spirit of the studio album reissues that commenced two years ago, there's an additional third disc that includes an unearthed performance that hadn't been heard since its original 1969 broadcast, Dave Lewis' contextual liner notes are informative and revelatory, and if you just love black-and-white photos of arcane recording gear and empty performance halls, you're in luck. But above all that, it's an exhaustive look at the lengths Led Zeppelin would go to for a chance to make it big through sheer force of music, and it's borne out by witnessing the band in the process their own self-creation.</p><p>Aside from Jimi Hendrix, a few jazzy UK prog bands, and the artists in the orbit of Miles Davis' electric period, nobody working at deconstructing rock'n'roll took such advantage of the possibilities of improvisation. To know Zeppelin as musicians puts that into focus: Jimmy Page flourished as an ex-session guitarist who still wanted to try any style as his own. John Bonham was so in the pocket even the fractions between the one and the two sounded deep. John Paul Jones strode with purpose along the border between groove's backbone and a nomadic soloist whether on bass or keys. And Robert Plant's voice could wring a Valhallan catharsis out of reading the cooking instructions on a box of macaroni. In isolation they were great; as an ensemble they were supernatural. It's not that they were merely shredding or otherwise showing off: Led Zeppelin wanted to find out where those sounds they built, borrowed, and stole could really go.</p><p>The first disc of *BBC Sessions *covers a stretch from early March to early August of 1969, a couple months after the release of their self-titled debut and a few before they dropped Led Zeppelin II. It seems wrong to call such a short stretch of time between first and second albums a "transitional period," but that's what these sessions capture. The churning, riff-splintering heavy blues-rock of their debut is already shoving against the confines of what they'd already put to tape. They do their damnedest to wring new vistas from old Willie Dixon numbers on "You Shook Me" and "I Can't Quit You Baby," and there are moments where everything converges in waves of virtuosity that hint at picking up where the soon-to-disband Cream left off in the blues-rock supergroup sweepstakes. It's when they stretch their legs on "Dazed and Confused"—still roughly album-length thanks to time constraints, and not yet the leviathan 20-minute concert centerpiece it was growing into—that their signature interplay starts to set them apart as their own entity, impossible to reproduce because they couldn't stop moving.</p><p>The in-progress nature of their 1969 material brings out some unpredictable sides. Hearing them hammer through live-set favorite "Somethin' Else" in rockabilly mode is borderline surreal, especially with Plant rampaging through a vocal diametrically opposed to Eddie Cochran's. And the third disc's unearthing of a three-song session once feared lost is a fine addition—as well as the first time anyone born after 1969 can hear the piano-driven, harmonica-blasting "Sunshine Woman," a B.B./Albert/Freddie King-simpatico cut which is perhaps their shortest line to electric blues as contemporary style rather than a mythical predecessor. (The sound is not great here. After the masters were erased, these cuts had to be sourced from a recording off of AM radio, but they're an exception on a collection with otherwise pristine fidelity.)</p><p>The most crucial detail of their '69 sets is how nearly every BBC performance at the time included some variation of "Communication Breakdown." You'd think it was their signature hit, or at least a cut that'd give them more critical affinity to the MC5 than Uriah Heep. It's always the springboard for something new, from a revelation of how many ways Page could either slice or bulldoze his way through his solo to a hint at their engagement with funk that wouldn't be heard so clearly again until The Song Remains the Same four years later.</p><p>If the 1969 sessions were Zeppelin figuring out who they were, the 1971 sessions were Led Zeppelin figuring out who they weren't. Broadcast on BBC Radio One's "In Concert" on April 4, 1971, and famously featuring the first-ever version of "Stairway to Heaven" eight months before the release of Led Zeppelin IV, the second disc features the band stepping into the vast musical expanse they had laid before themselves. III was released the previous October and was their first shot at pushing beyond their "blooze" rep to more vivid folk influences. There's still a medley that builds off "Whole Lotta Love" to skulk through foundational classics by John Lee Hooker ("Boogie Chillun"), Bukka White ("Fixin' to Die Blues"), Arthur Crudup ("That's Alright Mama"), and Elvis Presley ("A Mess of Blues"), but this chops-fest belies how hard the press mocked them for coming from a place the band would rather live in than visit as tourists__.__ And the peak-blues "Since I've Been Loving You" is where they finally figured out how to use their explosive power sparingly. Page's solo and Plant's wails pierce so deeply because they emerge from one of their most contemplative arrangements.</p><p>But their confidence and their chafing at being pigeonholed made for a creatively lucrative combination and the period between the releases of *III *and *IV *was the best time to capture that. So we get the heavy metal equivalent of a chromed-god Jack Kirby *Thor *drawing in "Immigrant Song," the careening time signature of a power-trio version of "Black Dog," and the acoustic Joni Mitchell-fueled heartbreak of "Going to California." Of course there's "Dazed and Confused" snatched from its blues-rock cradle and transformed into the Kubrick *2001 *psychedelic stargate sequence of their live set, bowed guitar and everything. And if overexposure hasn't dulled your senses to "Stairway to Heaven," you can hear it as it first sounded before it was played approximately two billion times on the radio—even if the last Page solo hadn't yet found its footing.</p><p>From a present-day perspective, where big-time arena-filling rock has settled on Muse, Foo Fighters, and 5 Seconds of Summer, diving headlong into the '69/'71 timeframe of the band that most necessitated the obnoxious yet fitting phrase "Rock Gods" might otherwise feel like history homework. But *BBC Sessions *captures an actual excitement, a document of a moment in an oft-told story of a band that isn't excessively beholden to it. No *Song Remains the Same *audio-visual stoner-movie overkill, no excess studio futzing, no sense that their peak was either already there or just in the rearview. It's just a meticulous document of a band whose hedonism kept them from restraining their absurd level of mastery. So here: have Zep as they both wanted to be and eventually were.</p><p>— <strong>Nate Patrin, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
| Led Zeppelin | Led Zepplin - DVD | <P>This double-DVD set includes over five hours of never-before-available concert and performance footage from Led Zeppelin, spanning the years 1969 to 1979. While enthusiasts have been trading poor quality versions of this material for years, this marks the first archival video release to contain any footage of the band playing live. The main feature on the first disc includes highlights of the band's legendary set at the Royal Albert Hall on January 9, 1970. If there was ever any doubt of the power and intricate legerdemain of Jimmy Page (guitar), Robert Plant (vocal/harmonica), John Paul Jones (bass/keyboards/mandolin), and John Bonham (drums), this performance will silence all detractors. The dozen songs from this show are derived primarily from their first two LPs with a few well-chosen covers thrown in for good measure. One particularly interesting inclusion is Plant's spontaneous incorporation of a few lines from Neil Young's "Down by the River" and "On the Way Home" during an epic "How Many More Times." Supplementary shorts on disc one feature a promotional video for "Communication Breakdown" -- with the band miming to a pre-recorded audio track -- a half-hour mini-show for Danish Television, a clip of "Dazed and Confused" from the British TV program Supershow, and a pair of tunes ("Communication Breakdown" and "Dazed and Confused") for the French TV show Tous en Scene.</P><P>The second DVD fast forwards to the '70s and continues with a trio of main attractions and a slew of extras. First up is a composite video for "Immigrant Song," which contains some amateur footage married to a previously unissued live version of the song. This is followed by outtakes from the motion picture Song Remains the Same (1976), which finds the quartet at Madison Square Garden in 1973. The oft-bootlegged 1975 Earls Court is up next highlighted by acoustic renderings of "Going to California" and "That's the Way." The last extended set finds Zep during their triumphant return to England in 1979. It would ultimately be a bittersweet affair as it was likewise their final performance in their homeland prior to the death of Bonham the following year. Extras on disc two include a few interview clips, promotional videos for "Over the Hills and Far Away," and "Travelling Riverside Blues" -- both circa the Led Zeppelin (1990) four-CD box set.</P>— <B>Lindsay Planer</B> |
| Led Zeppelin | Remasters | <p>A collection of most of Led Zeppelin's best-known tracks, this double-disc set only gives a slight idea of what the band accomplished in its career; stick with the original albums instead.</p>— <b>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</b> |
| Led Zeppelin | Mothership | <p>Led Zeppelin's reunion for an Ahmet Ertegun tribute concert in November 2007 (pushed back a couple of weeks due to a finger injury Jimmy Page sustained during rehearsals) seemed like a spur of the moment thing — but how spontaneous could it have been if it just happened to coincide with the release of an expanded The Song Remains the Same on both CD and DVD, the debut of their catalog as digital downloads, and the new two-disc compilation Mothership as a sampler of the whole shebang? Considering this full-scale, multi-prong assault — which also included a new album by Robert Plant, after all — it was probably not all that spontaneous. Such a precise attack suits this most mythic of classic rock groups, who always benefited from an enormous sense of scale. Weighing in at two discs and 24 tracks, Mothership has a sense of scale that the previous round of compilations — the two-part Early Days & Latter Days, delivered in 1999 and 2000 respectively — lacked, not just because it pushes these two phases together but because it is heavy on the heavy epics, emphasizing Zeppelin's sheer sonic ballast over either their lighter or more idiosyncratic moments. This effects the second disc more than the first, as the band started out heavy and expanded outward, and while it would have been nice if "Fool in the Rain" represented In Through the Out Door instead of "In the Evening," this is a minor quibble as Mothership hits the obvious high points without seeming perfunctory. And that, along with Page's new remastering, is the real selling point behind Mothership: as a compilation it is both gripping listening and a good introduction to this very album-oriented band, which is what makes it a welcome addition to their catalog. [The deluxe edition of Mothership contains a DVD with highlights from their eponymous live DVD — it's a nice bonus but really, you'd be better off getting the full set.]</p><p>— <strong>Stephen Thomas Erlewine</strong></p><hr/><p>Led Zeppelin were never much of a singles band: From 1969 on, guitarist Jimmy Page was adamant that the group's LPs not be mucked up with filler, so most of their releases contain only between eight and 10 tracks. Led Zeppelin's legacy so significantly shaped the next four decades of rock'n'roll and heavy metal that to further discount any one of those tracks seemed brash, negligent, or stupid. Twelve years of intense self-editing meant that Led Zeppelin required no best-of. Anyone truly interested in their music was advised to dig through their couch cushions until they came up with enough quarters to invest in one (or all) of the band's albums: It would be worth every penny.</p><p>Mothership—a collection of 24 of Led Zeppelin's "greatest hits," remastered and selected by the band's three remaining members (Page, as well as Robert Plant and John Paul Jones)—might be conceptually flawed, but it's hard to argue against songs as indisputably great as these. Mothership is not the first time Page has participated in the distillation of his own work: In 1990, a decade after John Bonham downed his last shot of vodka, Page curated an eponymous boxset (known, in fan parlance, as Crop Circles) which saw their eight-album discography distilled to four perfect CDs. And in 2002, Atlantic released Early Days and Latter Days: Volumes 1 and 2 (each previously available as a single purchase, in 1999 and 2000, respectively), a Page-condoned collection of 23 tracks which awesomely featured all four members of Led Zeppelin on the cover, dressed in giant American space suits and perched casually in front of an illustrated moonscape. Early Days and Latter Days has a tracklist similar to Mothership (the latter adds "D'yer Mak'er", "Over the Hills and Far Away", "Heartbreaker", and "Ramble On", but loses "Ten Years Gone", "What Is and What Should Never Be", and "The Battle of Evermore") so, clearly, the idea of Led Zeppelin's greatest hits is contentious even for the band itself.</p><p>Fans will probably argue over Led Zeppelin's selections—omitting "What Is and What Should Never Be" feels unforgivable—and it seems obvious that Page, Plant, and Jones were striving hard to represent every last phase of their career: Some work from the band's crucial 1969-1975 era is sacrificed for late-career tokens like the comparably-mediocre "In The Evening" (itself a curious selection, given the relative popularity of In Through the Out Door's "Fool in the Rain", which was the band's last release to make the pop single charts). Still, content-critiquing aside, the remastering on Mothership is no small achievement, and it sounds revelatory on even the shittiest stereos. Check Bonham's pitter-pattering in the verses of "Ramble On", or the still-intact fuzz at the top of "Immigrant Song", or the tiny percussive "fwwpts" on "D'yer Mak'er", or the restored outro to "Over the Hills and Far Away". Twist your volume knob heavenward and embrace Plant's inescapable geekiness, yelping about Gollum and Mordor; chug booze and air-drum with John Bonham: Led Zeppelin sound as tremendous in 2007 as they did in 1972.</p><p>Mothership offers no bonus content or previously unreleased material. It serves, mainly, as an introduction for those (presumably out of classic rock radio range) still unfamiliar with the band. Longtime fans will find little of use here, although anyone who spends a couple hours with Mothership will find themselves duly reminded that Led Zeppelin are quite possibly the finest rock band of all time.</p><p>— <strong>Amanda Petrusich, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
| John Legend | Get Lifted [Special Edition] | <p>If you've listened to Top 40 radio or flipped through the video channels during the past few years, odds are pretty good you know something about John Legend. He played piano on Lauryn Hill's "Everything Is Everything" and might as well be considered Kanye West's sidekick, having assisted the producer and MC on several sessions — Jay-Z's "Encore" and Slum Village's "Selfish" being two of the more prominent 2004 singles featuring his work. A former choir director, he has also released a handful of energetic live discs, some of which are credited to his less hubristic birth name, John Stephens. And though he claims "I've got something new," you've also heard substantial chunks of Get Lifted in records made decades ago by Sly & the Family Stone, Curtis Mayfield, Quincy Jones, and Bill Withers. This might not be a problem for listeners who crave anything that recalls the music they first heard in their youth, but Legend's over-reliance upon his inspirations is an impediment as much as a slick way to grab attention. That's because he has more than enough talent and charm to get by on his own. His own lyrics and hooks are unique and clever enough to get the point across that he's no everyday R&B artist and, just as importantly, he has a personable and instantly fetching voice you could listen to all day long. However, the association with West — whose Sony-distributed boutique label released the record — is very helpful. Without it, Legend would likely be zoned into neo-soul (2003's Live at SOB's New York City really makes this notion apparent), thereby standing little chance of reaching the ears of anyone younger than 30. The production work supporting his songs strikes a fine balance between soul and hip-hop, allowing him to appeal to those who are coming from either angle. This is a very good record. It's a given that Legend is destined to make at least two others that top it. [Columbia released an edition with a bonus DVD.]</p><p>— <b>Andy Kellman</b></p> |
| John Lennon | Double Fantasy | |
| Yundi Li | Chopin | <p>There is no question as to Yundi Li's technique. When this recording was made in 2001, Li was a mere 19 years old, but from the evidence on this disc, he was already a formidable technician. The extravagant technical difficulties of the repertoire — Chopin's Sonata No. 3, several of the etudes, and the Andante spianato et grande polonaise — are dispatched with skill and panache from the most delicate arabesques to the thunderous double octaves in contrary motion. Although there have been many other pianists who have played these works as well or better from a technical point of view, Li's performances stand up well in their company. But for all of his maturity as a technician, Li's interpretations are still those of a youth. The deeper meaning of the Sonata No. 3 — its awe-inspiring harmonic structure and its formalization of fear and courage in the opening and closing movements — are wholly beyond Li. The transcendentelegance of the Andante spianato and the radiant joy of the grande polonaise are merely graceful and cheerful in Li's interpretations. And his three Nocturnes are not so much emotional, seductive, and beautiful as they are sentimental, playful, and pretty. With his amazing technique, Li may develop into an amazing pianist. But one hopes that he grows as an interpreter as well.</p> — <b>by James Leonard - All Music</b> |
| Ottmar Liebert | Nouveau Flamenco | |
| Dave Liebman | Lookout Farm | |
| Gordon Lightfoot | The United Artists Collection | <p>This double CD contains all four of the Toronto singer/songwriter's '60s studio albums (the live LP Sunday Concert, not included here, was also released in the '60s). On these records, his resonant vocals, lyrical ambition, and melodic strengths produced as close a rival to Bob Dylan as Canada ever fashioned during that decade, and foreshadowed work by other major Canadian singer/songwriters of the late '60s, such as Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Leonard Cohen. "Early Mornin' Rain" (covered by fellow Canadian folkies Ian & Sylvia), the folk-rock protest number "Black Day in July," the epic "Canadian Railroad Trilogy," and his cover of Ewan McColl's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" are all present, and are among the most popular tracks Lightfoot has issued during his long career. Featuring both acoustic and folk-rock recordings, this neatly bundles Lightfoot's early work into a listenable and fairly inexpensive package.</p><p>—<strong>Richie Unterberger</strong></p> |
| Gordon Lightfoot | Sunday Concert | <p>Recorded at a March 1969 concert in Toronto, Sunday Concert holds more interest than the usual live album because about half of the songs are Gordon Lightfoot compositions that had not been previously recorded in the studio. Accompanied by Red Shea on lead guitar and Rick Haynes on bass, he also mixed old favorites like "I'm Not Sayin'" and "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" with the new material on this set, which has good (though not outstanding) sound. These then-new songs aren't among his classics, but are up to the general high standard of his '60s work, with the socially conscious "The Lost Children" and the poetic "Leaves of Grass" standing out as lyrical highlights.</p><p>—<strong>Richie Unterberger</strong></p> |
| Gordon Lightfoot | If You Could Read My Mind | <p>Originally released as Sit Down Young Stranger in the summer of 1970, this album was reissued under this name a few months later, as the song "If You Could Read My Mind" began its climb up the pop chart. The single peaked at number five, while the album reached number 12. It seemed as though "If You Could Read My Mind" was everywhere in the early months of 1971. Its appeal crossed genres and age groups, and its simplicity and acoustic arrangement fit in nicely with the burgeoning singer/songwriter scene then storming the airwaves and record stores. "If You Could Read My Mind" was not the first track released as a single from this album; Lightfoot's recording of Kris Kristofferson's soon-to-be-classic "Me and Bobby McGee," the only non-original in this collection, preceded it but barely dented the charts. The entire album is rich in the simple beauty of its folky melodies and personal lyrics. Lightfoot is accompanied here by his regular band of the time, Red Shea on guitar and Rick Haynes on bass. This trio is expanded on several cuts with Warner/Reprise labelmates Ry Cooder on bottleneck guitar and mandolin, John Sebastian on autoharp, harmonica, and electric guitar, and Van Dyke Parks on harmonium. In addition, there are subtle string arrangements by Randy Newman on two tracks, Nick DeCaro on three. There are no drums to be found anywhere on this disc. This album fits in very well with the acoustic-based music being made at the turn of the '70s. Even so, the music here is timeless, still feeling and sounding great many years after its release.</p><p>— <strong>Jim Newsom</strong></p> |
| Gordon Lightfoot | If You Could Read My Mind | <p>Originally released as Sit Down Young Stranger in the summer of 1970, this album was reissued under this name a few months later, as the song "If You Could Read My Mind" began its climb up the pop chart. The single peaked at number five, while the album reached number 12. It seemed as though "If You Could Read My Mind" was everywhere in the early months of 1971. Its appeal crossed genres and age groups, and its simplicity and acoustic arrangement fit in nicely with the burgeoning singer/songwriter scene then storming the airwaves and record stores. "If You Could Read My Mind" was not the first track released as a single from this album; Lightfoot's recording of Kris Kristofferson's soon-to-be-classic "Me and Bobby McGee," the only non-original in this collection, preceded it but barely dented the charts. The entire album is rich in the simple beauty of its folky melodies and personal lyrics. Lightfoot is accompanied here by his regular band of the time, Red Shea on guitar and Rick Haynes on bass. This trio is expanded on several cuts with Warner/Reprise labelmates Ry Cooder on bottleneck guitar and mandolin, John Sebastian on autoharp, harmonica, and electric guitar, and Van Dyke Parks on harmonium. In addition, there are subtle string arrangements by Randy Newman on two tracks, Nick DeCaro on three. There are no drums to be found anywhere on this disc. This album fits in very well with the acoustic-based music being made at the turn of the '70s. Even so, the music here is timeless, still feeling and sounding great many years after its release.</p><p>— <strong>Jim Newsom</strong></p> |
| Gordon Lightfoot | Don Quixote | <p>Perhaps one of his most Canadian releases, Don Quixote is a very pleasant folk sounding album. From "Alberta Bound" to "Christian Island" to "Ode to Big Blue," Lightfoot pays tribute to the many and varied places that make up his homeland. Also of note are such love songs as "Beautiful" and the lovely "Looking at the Rain." All in all, there's not a bad cut here. It's well worth your time.</p><p>—<strong>James Chrispell</strong></p> |
| Gordon Lightfoot | Old Dan's Record's | <p>A country influence (via pedal steel) creeps into the arrangements on Old Dan's Records. A drummer is also included throughout, making this a much more contemporary-sounding album, as Gordon Lightfoot began to move away from his folk influences and into the pop/rock field. Sure, there still are the folk songs, such as "That Same Old Obsession," but this album was the seed planted that would flower in upcoming releases. A pivotal point in Lightfoot's career.</p><p>—<strong>James Chrispell</strong></p> |
| Gordon Lightfoot | Gord's Gold | <p>Following the success of Sundown, Gordon Lightfoot continued his success by releasing a greatest-hits compilation. A double album (now a single CD), it contained the most popular songs from his Warner Bros. years on disc two, and he re-recorded many of his early songs for side one of record one. Although not as good, perhaps, as the originals, this did bring them up to date with his current sound style. Just about all the favorites are here (except "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which hadn't been recorded yet when this set was put together and appears on Lightfoot's second volume of Gord's Gold), making this a good general overview of a strong talent. When Warner transferred the double LP to CD, "Affair on 8th Avenue" was dropped from the program to make the set fit on a single disc. Randy Newman arranged the orchestration on "Minstrel of the Dawn," by the way.</p><p>—<strong>James Chrispell</strong></p> |
| Gordon Lightfoot | Gord's Gold | <p>Following the success of Sundown, Gordon Lightfoot continued his success by releasing a greatest-hits compilation. A double album (now a single CD), it contained the most popular songs from his Warner Bros. years on disc two, and he re-recorded many of his early songs for side one of record one. Although not as good, perhaps, as the originals, this did bring them up to date with his current sound style. Just about all the favorites are here (except "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which hadn't been recorded yet when this set was put together and appears on Lightfoot's second volume of Gord's Gold), making this a good general overview of a strong talent. When Warner transferred the double LP to CD, "Affair on 8th Avenue" was dropped from the program to make the set fit on a single disc. Randy Newman arranged the orchestration on "Minstrel of the Dawn," by the way.</p><p>—<strong>James Chrispell</strong></p> |
| Gordon Lightfoot | Summertime Dream | <p>With Summertime Dream, Gordon Lightfoot produced one of his finest albums, and wrapped up a six-year period of popularity that he would not recapture. Propelled by his second biggest hit, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," Summertime Dream summed up the sound that had served Lightfoot so well in his post-"If You Could Read My Mind" days. This distinctive sound featured Lightfoot's strummed six- or 12-string guitar complemented by Terry Clements' electric guitar lines and Pee Wee Charles' pedal steel guitar accents. The material here is excellent, and the singer's voice is at its strongest. Mixing upbeat songs like "Race Among the Ruins," "I'd Do It Again," and the title track with beautiful ballads such as "I'm Not Supposed to Care" and "Spanish Moss," Lightfoot and his band deliver a tasty smorgasbord of intelligent, grown-up music. As for "Edmund Fitzgerald," its continued popularity more than 20 years after its release attests to the power of a well-told tale and a tasty guitar lick.</p><p>—<strong>Jim Newsom</strong></p> |
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