Review Summary: A traveller of both time and space...
Physical Graffiti is a massive sprawl of music genres and styles, a melting pot of gold, of brilliance and immense talent. The best Zeppelin album behind IV, it truly showcases their unique and unsurpassable musical capacities.
From the strutting, London club style riffs of Custard Pie, The Wanton Song and Sick Again to the 1940s style English folk Down By The Seaside to the gargantuan Far East Kashmir, Physical Graffiti is both a time machine and a space machine: influences from countries and times all over the world can be found here.
SIDE 1
With a brilliant double opening of afore mentioned Custard Pie and the wonderfully poetic The Rover, we see that Zeppelin has lost none of their musical know-how. The Rover wins you over from the beginning with Jimmy Page’s huge riff and Plants imagery:
I’ve been to London, seen seven wonders/I know to trip is just to fall.
In My Time Of Dying, a monolithic, 11 minute blues piece, starts with a quiet, woozy yet rich slide guitar and builds up to freight train pace, yet never loses control.
Houses Of The Holy, with its free, spiritual, chugging riff, is dedicated to the venues Zeppelin played at, with a nod to their drug happy fans as well:
Are you dizzy when you’re stoned? Let the music be your master/Will you heed the master’s call?
Trampled Underfoot, a swamp-funk miss, is the worst song on the album. The annoying keyboard and flat lyrics are a huge disappointment. It is quickly brushed aside by what follows it; Kashmir, one of Zeppelin’s greatest, and possibly their most ambitious, song. With rolling orchestral sweeps and Plant displaying all of his range and depth while the wonderful lyrics, influenced by trips all over the world through the subcontinent, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, add to the mystique, radio stations had no qualms about playing it, despite its 8:34 running time.
SIDE 2
The eerie, Ancient Egyptian style In The Light is one of the multi-talented, multi-instrumental, underrated Jones’ best works. Zeppelin were never able to recreate the spine tingling keyboard sound live, and one can only imagine how far it could’ve gone if they had.
The two minute instrumental Bron Yr Aur, entirely composed by Page, is, while undoubtedly a filler, is a damn good filler. The idyllic Down By The Seaside reniforces Zeppelin’s ability to take entirely new genres and turn them into fantastic songs: it sounds like an old wartime number that Vera Lynn might’ve done-until it drops into the heavy blues that Zeppelin became renowned for.
The beautiful Ten Years Gone is a break up song that is a far cry from the ‘you’ve been bad to me woman, and I’m gonna leave you’ line from Led Zeppelin I. Page’s magnicent emotion playing, with Plant’s wistful lyrics, melt over Bonham and Jones’ steady rhythms.
Night Flight, an ode to the young people who went to Cananda to dodge enlistment to Vietnam, is a fantastic piece, with Jones’ sunrise organ and Plant’s youthful voice.
The Wanton Song, by its own rights, is a solid dong. But compared to the rest of the album, it’s a fairly weak track. By contrast, the casbah jive of Boogie With Stu is fantastic stuff, as is the Deep South Black Country Woman. Sick Again, which would probably cause uproar amongst parent groups if released today, is just solid.
Although it isn’t the best Led Zeppelin album, if you ever wanted to define the incontainable talent and presence of one of the greatest bands of all time, this is your album.
FIVE STAR SONGS
The Rover
Houses of the Holy
Kashmir
Ten Years Gone
Night Flight
FOUR STAR SONGS
Custard Pie
In My Time Of Dying
In The Light
Bron Yr Aur
Down By The Seaside
Boogie With Stu
