Mighty Rearranger review in UK newspaper

["Stephen Humphries" <manicnirvana01@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here's a review of Plant's album in the British newspaper, The Observer. 
Sounds like it is an amazing record!

Observer Music Magazine
OMM: Review: CDs: The first ten: Led in his pencil: 1, robert plant and the 
strange sensation Mighty Rearranger (Sanctuary) 5/5 pounds 11.99 Andrew 
Perry falls for 'Percy'
Andrew Perry
568 words
20 March 2005
The Observer
© Copyright 2005. The Observer. All rights reserved.

Like rock itself, Robert Plant lost his way in the 1980s. Mirroring the 
drift of the times, his whole raison d'etre was apparently to expunge from 
his music any trace of the preceding decade's blues-descended glories. Hence 
his diversions into crooning with the Honeydrippers, and albums with 
unappetising titles such as The Principle of Moments , Shaken and Stirred 
and Now and Zen , which lumbered along to moribund beats more befitting of a 
slow night at Studio 54 than of the mighty 'Percy', erstwhile lemon-squeezer 
with Led Zeppelin.

Solo Plant has never ignited the public passion. He is not, however, and 
never has been, the megastar slob, indolent and adrift from contemporary 
music. He's one of its greatest enthusiasts, even now a keen record shopper. 
His Eighties stuff can best be seen as him eagerly, if not always 
successfully, trying on novel sounds for size. His Nineties were about 
attempting to re-engage with Zep's monolithic legacy, to imagine other 
possible routes leading off from 'Whole Lotta Love', 'Kashmir' and 'Stairway 
to Heaven'.

Indeed he swept majestically into the new millennium with 2002's Dreamland 
on which he joined forces with a band, the Strange Sensation, covering 
Dylan, the Tims (Rose and Buckley) and 'Hey Joe'.

With Mighty Rearranger , the group adventure unfolds dramatically. All 
tracks are self-composed and quickly get under your skin, triggering an 
immediate sense that this may be Plant's best showing since Physical 
Graffiti in 1975.

Scarcely ever in danger of the prosaic, his epic lyricism here finds new 
energy through a sharp contemporary focus. With the opening 'Another Tribe', 
he pitches straight into the madness of our warring times, the hopelessness 
of trying to find some true redemption through the misleading fog of 
propaganda. 'Shine it all Around' is an uplifting stomp demanding famine 
relief, and 'Takamba' spits fire about a deception which can only be Blair's 
('Hail the gift of memory in this 52nd state', and so on).

On this last song, and the rollicking title track, the Strange Sensation 
pump out a rock of thunder-clap drums and rampagingly loud chords, which 
anyone with even vague Zep leanings will find hard to resist. 'All the 
King's Horses', an exquisitely seasoned ballad about a mature fellow finding 
himself once again powerless to resist love's magnetic pull, is truly fit 
for 'Going to California"s slot on Led Zeppelin IV

At the heart of this fresh and dynamic sound sits Plant's sovereign voice. 
Maturity has shaved the screechy-scratchy extremities from it, and taught 
its owner to tether its force with sensitivity and restraint. When he does 
unleash the beast, he still makes a fearsome noise like no other, as when he 
howls wordlessly on the closing 'Brother Ray' - a tribute, of course, to the 
late Ray Charles.

The many sides of Percy are here: the fan, the man at the crossroads, the 
sage, the libidinous animal, the enraged conscience. Above all, it's the 
re-emergence of the first-rate songwriter which makes this a triumph.

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