Postby & » 09 Apr 2005, 04:46
zep is one of the bands i'm more fond of, and a good deal of that appeal is because they sound very good.
jimmy page's guitar tones are almost always compelling, original, and exceedingly well recorded, for example.
that said, II sounds hurried and incomplete to me, with more moments of blatant tasteless idiocy than their (quite high to begin with) average.
every so often in their catalogue, there comes along a song which could have been oh so cool if not for either a) really dumb lyrics b) overemoted singing c) being stretched to over eight minutes or d) some other crime against taste and common sense which makes you wish they had somebody telling them what to do sometimes.
two has 'ramble on', which is the greatest pity of modern music... lovely melody, sweet guitar solo, incredible bassline... all completely laid to waste with the 'gollum and the evil one' crud that plant chose to sprinkle over it.
'thank you' is a soppy waste for me. it could have been a pleasant enough song (i prefer the version on the bbc sessions), but the studio version sounds too kitschy for me to handle.
'bring it on home' is another gorgeous riff marred by the black man antics in the beginning.
the orgasmic part of 'whole lotta love' i quite like actually.
as to the guitar solo on 'heartbreaker', it's become such a part of the song for me that i can't really rationalize it one way or the other. it just is. again, the bbc sessions version deals with it better with the buildup back into the song.
'living loving maid' is a classic example of how much zep's sound and playing had to do with their likablity... perfectly ordinary song, but with zep crunch all over it, it sounds absolutely excellent.
i love moby dick, drum solo and all. i can sing the drum solo by rote if i have to... it's not the sort of drum solo i like very much, because it lacks any sort of central groove and feels like aimless doodling around to me, but bonham's kit sounds so good, that i can really lose myself in that. it's the live versions that get on my nerves.
apologies for the length of this all...
the conclusion?
nah, two isn't tripe, it's a pleasant record which has loads of zep guitars and grooves and basslines which will surely catch the ear. that said, i think the first album is stronger in terms of writing, and 'houses of the holy' probably the most diverse and textured record they made.
