Robert Plant: Dreamland

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating * * * )

Plant has often been miscast as just The Voice of Led Zep, which hardly acknowledges that he brought Anglo-folk and what we now call "world music" into heavy rock.

Post-Zep he made some godawful cock-rock nonsense but in the past decade has gone back to what he knows intuitively.

This album finds him on unexpected Dylan (One More Cup of Coffee), late 60s cult figure Skip Spence's Song, old blues (an underwhelming take on Bukka White's Believe I'm Fixin' to Die opens proceedings) and a terrific, disconcerting North African rock'n'roll treatment of Hey Joe.

But while most of this is good, and he tastefully explores Tim Buckley's Song to the Siren, Plant doesn't have the most expressive of voices - it's a yelp, right? - so it's down to the various backdrops of strings, sky-scaling guitars or impish folk to carry the day. Which they do.

(Mercury)