Band of Joy | Loppylugs

Submitted by Jon Taylor on 4 September 2015 - 8:51pm

Cover:

Artist:

Robert Plant

album-ID:

a_174

Nationality:

Year:

2 010

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

Angel Dance*House Of Cards*Central Two-O-Nine*SIlver Rider*You Can't Buy My Love*Falling In Love Again*The Only Sound That Matters*Monkey*Cindy I'll Marry You Someday*Harm's Swift Way*Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down*Even This Shall Pass Away

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_67

Now-num:

2 015

Spotify-URL:

23LF1MFKTSuwYU8k1wfGAy

Short-title:

BandOfJoy

nominator-ID:

u_3

Meeting-date:

Wednesday, 4 November 2015

MusicBrainz-URL:

39cd1170-92b9-44e1-9474-866fb2aeabc5

Wikipedia-URL:

Band_of_Joy_(album)

Spotify-link-type:

album

Metacritic-URL:

band-of-joy/robert-plant

Discogs-URL:

Robert-Plant-Band-Of-Joy/master/288145

Allmusic-URL:

band-of-joy-mw0002004361

BBC-URL:

3x8r

rdio-URL:

Robert_Plant/album/Band_of_Joy

code

Some global variables used across pages

code

this is code for each album page, to be hidden

review-form data

guest-list data

108

109

117

reviewers-IDs data

-1-

-14-

-13-

62

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

There's a feeling I get when I look to the west

1-6-12

2-4-10-11

There’s a variation in the both the quality and style of the pieces, some of which seem to be from decades apart from other tracks on the album. Because it moves about between so many eras I’m not sure it sits together that well, the common thread really is his voice. Among others, there’s touches of Blues, Americana, Rock, Folk and Country flavourings on this.

Falling In Love Again is probably the one I enjoyed the most – a 50s throwback which I can imagine The King performing and which has a super bass vocal and slide guitars. (He’s a great pseudo-Elvis is our Bob, you gotta hear the Dread Zeppelin album and you'll never be able to escape that thought.) You Can’t Buy My Love, a dodgy 60s-era Beatles cast-off. Monkey feels more like an 80s / 90s anthemic seering big rock piece. ‘Tonight the monkey dies’ goes the lyric, not too sure what that metaphor achieves, to be honest with you. Generally his lyrics here are typical of his work, combining odd antiquated Olde English phrases like ‘Tomorrow bringeth a brand new day’ with Southern US phrases, such as 'Where d'ya get yer liquor?' Everyone's got to have their trademark lyrical angle, I guess.

It’s difficult for me to escape this image of a comfortable rock veteran sampling various flavours but not really committing and not driven to express anything new or particularly personal. More celebratory than individual. Some great bits, all convincingly performed but nothing groundbreaking and it doesn’t move me emotionally, which maybe it should and which might have justified the undoubted effort. And I have to say it does have the worst album cover that I can think of – an absolute shocker – not that should really matter, of course, but someone had to say.
58

reviewed by

Richard Norbury
42

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

Great covers, but bland otherwise

4-8

Turns out that the two tracks that I liked were covers, and the rest were (un) originals. Found them to be rather 'trying to tick all boxes' resulting in them being pleasantish but forgettable. Not a great effort for someone with so much to draw upon.