There’s no denying that Led Zeppelin is one of the most popular and influential bands of the rock era. It’s staggering to merely ponder the number of garage bands that were put together because some suburban kids loved Led Zep. To judge from the number of bands making a living as Zep tribute bands in Southern California alone, the band is as popular now as it was in the early to mid-1970s.
The last time a Led Zeppelin tribute album was released (Encomium), it was 1995 and the center of the indie rock universe was Seattle. In 2010, its neighbor to the south, Portland, is the current indie haven, and this latest Zep tribute album was put together largely by Portland musicians over the past six years. (There are a couple of Seattle acts and one or two from Eugene, and even one or two from that other trendy spot, Brooklyn.)
Led Zeppelin had an outsize career and reputation, and this album, From The Land of Ice And Snow, is a sprawling work: two CDs contain 33 tracks, and a free digital download for those who buy the CD set has another 17 (although some of the songs also appear on the CDs by different artists), for a whopping total of 50 tracks.
This type of release is notoriously difficult to review. There are so many songs, by so many different artists, all of whom have different takes on the music. It’s a rare tribute set of any size that pleases every listener with every track, and this one is no exception. I suspect, though, that what I don’t like probably doesn’t match up with what some other reviewer doesn’t like. It’s the nature of the beast.
Of course if you’re a purist Led Zeppelin fan (like my best friend Bob) you’ll hate everything about Land of Ice and Snow. Particularly the cover of “Moby Dick” that appears about two-thirds of the way through the Disc 1. It’s credited to Knock-Knock, which is basically Chris Funk, guitarist for The Decemberists. It’s a playful but too-long pastiche of music, beat-type poetry and readings from Melville’s book, mostly over drum solos and studio manipulation.
For the most part, though, the musicians play it fairly straight with the music. And as usual, the most successful are those who remain true to the song’s spirit while putting their own artistic spin on it, rather than trying to mimic the original.
It’s now confession time. I’m only deeply familiar with Led Zeppelin II and whatever Zep music got played on the radio or I heard in my friends’ homes and cars back in the day. That said, I was surprised by how many of these songs that I knew by ear if not by title. Led Zeppelin was simply part of the cultural zeitgeist when I was in high school and college.
My favorite of all the CD tracks is the subtly muscular acoustic blues version of “Black Dog” by Portland cowpunk bandleader Lana Rebel. It demonstrates just what a true artist can do with just an acoustic guitar and her voice.
Of the covers of Led Zeppelin II songs, my favorite is “Heartbreaker” by Lackthereof, a side project of Menomena’s Danny Seim with Pete McCracken on guitars. It’s truly garagey, with big sludgy guitars on that signature riff and nearly buried vocals. I’ve already discussed “Moby Dick.” (One of my big disappointments is the lack of “Living Loving Maid,” my favorite Zep track, and a knockout on the album coming on the heels of “Heartbreaker.”) Also getting the garage rock treatment is “Whole Lotta Love,” by Holly Morgan’s group fukd’uptight. It’s a deceptively tricky song to get right, and Morgan seems to have made the common mistake of hewing too close to the original, vocally.
M. Ward appears on a couple of tracks, and predictably I like them as well as anything on the album. He contributes piano to “Houses of the Holy” by Beltline, a Portland power pop/folk-rock band; and he plays solo acoustic guitars in his own immediately recognizable style on the instrumental “Bron-Yr-Aur.”
Other tracks that tickled my fancy: “Babe I’m Going to Leave You” by the Clampitt Family, better known as a bluegrass band but here employing cello, piano, violin and guitars in a mostly acoustic setting; “Dazed and Confused” by the Portland Cello Project with Laura Gibson on vocals; “Your Time is Gonna Come” by Nick Jaina on solo piano and vocals; the sunny California pop vibe of Kaia’s “Fool in the Rain,” with Rachel Blumberg drumming up a storm behind Kaia Wilson’s vocals; the freak-folk arrangement of “Thank You” by Dan Jones of Eugene, mixing equal parts Daniel Johnston and John Lennon; Amy Annelle’s arresting vocals on “Friends”; and the hard-country take on “Down by the Seaside” by Portland country-rockers Power of County, yet another project involving Erik Clampitt, one of Portland’s more ubiquitous musicians of the past few years. I also, against all expectations, liked Kelly Blair Bauman’s solo home recording of “Stairway to Heaven.” The Portland alt-country singer-songwriter gives a hushed, quiet dignity and elegance to this cover of this most ubiquitous of all Zep songs. She sings it beautifully, and wisely doesn’t attempt to mimic the iconic guitar solo, simply ending the song after the line “to be a rock and not to roll.”
In addition to a couple identified above, other tracks that didn’t appeal to me included “In the Evening” by Death Cab For Cutie’s Chris Walla, which is droning and boring, with a painful guitar noise interlude in the middle; and Disc 1 opener “Good times Bad Times” by Kind of Like Spitting. A few others just didn’t really register, including Dave Depper’s “I’m Gonna Crawl,” Parks & Recreation’s “All My Love”; “No Quarter” by Testface; and, sad to say, “Four Sticks” by Rebecca Gates and her band The Consortium. I had mixed feelings about “Kashmir,” by Portland’s current critical darlings Loch Lomond. It has a lovely gypsy clarinet intro, followed by the familiar bass riff and exotic rhythm, which alternates between four and seven beats per measure. But the production is murky, and some of Jade Eckler’s expressive soprano vocals are lost.
The driving force behind the project was label head Rob Jones, but the most common name in the credits is that of Adam Selzer, who produced most of the tracks at his Type Foundry studio and also performed on at least two tracks: “Poor Tom,” in which he did all the playing and singing; and “Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp” by Arch Cape, which is the latest project of his domestic partner Rachel Blumberg.
I recommend this project to Zeppelin fans and anyone interested in the current wildly creative atmosphere of the Northwest indie music scene. Another reason to buy it is that a percentage of proceeds will go to First Octave, an organization that supports music education in the schools.
- Gary Whitehouse
(Jealous Butcher, 2010)
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