Robert Plant review: Rock legend grows old gracefully with exciting new material

Anyone wondering about how to grow old gracefully in rock’n’roll would do well to study the example of Robert Plant.

At 69 — with most of his peers having either retired, died or cashed in on the reunion circuit — the former Led Zeppelin frontman continues to explore and create.

Having dabbled in country-rock with Alison Krauss, his latest incarnation, alongside The Sensational Space Shifters, spawned this year’s brilliant folk-meets-world-music collection Carry Fire.

The leather trousers have made way for jeans, but Plant’s voice is in remarkably good nick. During Friday night’s show at the Royal Albert Hall, he was husky and haunting on set opener New World and bluesy and bellowing on Turn It Up.

While the songs are often serious in sentiment there was an obvious joy in playing them. Plant was happy to share the spotlight with his band, too, and quipped that “some of us still even talk to each other”.

Sprinkled among the new material were a selection of Led Zeppelin tracks, including a folky reworking of Baby I’m Gonna Leave You and a heavy-riffin’ encore of Whole Lotta Love. Yet it was the new material — the Arabic-inspired Carry Fire, the Chrissie Hynde-featuring Bluebirds over the Mountain — that scored highest.

And that’s the ultimate compliment one can pay Plant: that, at 69, there’s genuine excitement for what he’s doing, and what he might do next, rather than for simply what he’s done.