ROBERT PLANT AND THE STRANGE SENSATION: MIGHTY REARRANGER

After such an excellent album such as Dreamland, the public was again expecting much from Percy, so Mighty Rearranger was eagerly awaited for. It was very well received by the press and fans alike, often being cited as his best post-Zep work (included or excluded the No Quarter thing), but it sold rather well. While this writer likes MR very much, I don't think that it tops its predecessor, partly because the choice of covers rendered Dreamland particularly strong, while the present was mainly made of original material. With a slightly changed line-up over Dreamland (long-time bassist Charlie Jones) is gone, this is the first album to bear the Strange Sensation name.

If all of the tracks on MR are written by the band shows that indeed the group gelled fairly well; but to expect from this album to be a masterpiece might be a tad unrealistic. Some tracks bear some kind of resemblance to Dreamland or even slight Zep reminiscences, such as the opening Another Time, Shine It (a better version in the DVD), the excellent Tin Pan Valley, the haunting Enchanter, the enthralling Takamba and the tense Four Winds. Some are less successful like Freedom Fries (a piece of its time), the sleepy King's Horses, the uninspired Dancing In Heaven, the ethnic-sounding Somebody Knocking and the overplayed title track. Other tracks have a more synthetic feel like the middle section of Tin Pan or the closing throwaway Brother Ray tidbit, but mostly the hidden section, which is a Shine It techno-rework. Clearly, the album tends to run out of steam in its second half.

One of my main gripes from the present album is that it appears less musically brilliant, especially in terms of solo. Maybe this was voluntarily so, in order to let the band appear very tight by keeping the songs shorter (max 5½ mins), but after the sheer heroics of the previous album, one cannot help but be a bit disappointed. Prog, you ask? Not in the least, but it shouldn't stop you from enjoying one of Plant's better solo career album, even if it won't age as well as its timeless predecessor.

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