SAMESAMEOLDOLD(do you care?)
No "Black Dog" here, no "Kashmir" either. Yet though Presence doesn't bombingly pockmark the landscape or scale snowy Himalayan heights even if Jimmy Page's guitar is becoming a riff Osterizer and Robert Plant's voice is shredding at the edges and tearing in the middle — still, Zeppelin has such command of heavy-metal weaponry that even their modest efforts have scorched-earth capability.
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SAMESAMEOLDOLD(do you care?)
James Wolcott
by
LED ZEPPELIN Presence (Swan Song)
No "Black Dog" here, no "Kashmir" either. Yet though Presence doesn't bombingly pockmark the landscape or scale snowy Himalayan heights even if Jimmy Page's guitar is becoming a riff Osterizer and Robert Plant's voice is shredding at the edges and tearing in the middle — still, Zeppelin has such command of heavy-metal weaponry that even their modest efforts have scorched-earth capability. When Zeppelin doesn't launch search-and-destroy missions into your neocortex it's because they don't want to, not because they can't. This album, a quickie recorded in eighteen days, lacks the fleetness of Houses of the Holy and the architectural density of Physical Graffiti, but in its best moments still manages to rattle the windowpanes.
"Achilles' Last Stand" for example is lengthy, too lengthy, and drivingly 'singleminded (a detour or two would have been nice), but is rescued by Plant's parched-throat chanting which gives the track a raw thrilling lift. "For Your Life," however, features Plant at his most dreary: he boringly moans coital groans as if his vocal cords were located in his testicles; such singing should be vasectomized. "Royal Orleans" has teasing guitar licks; "Nobody's Fault but Mine" opens pretentiously but has a blasty harmonica break; "Candy Store Rock" is formula grindola, and "Tea for One" is the obligatory soul-dragging, slow-bluesy number, a recycle of "Since I've Been Loving You" from album three. The high on Presence is "Hots on for Nowhere" which is dynamically sporadic, with Plant's voice dancing across the interstices (and dancing adroitly: listen to the way he sings "shivers down my back-bone"), guitars colliding, 1 meshing, then venturing out, and, refreshingly, drumming which isn't so conscientiously stupid that you'd want to grab the drumsticks from Bonham's hands and acupuncture his firstborn child. •
Except to note that The Object which decorates the 'elpee's gatefold looks like an Islamic paperweight or an intergalactic dildo (take your pick), there's little else pertinent to say of Presence. Contrary to myth, critics have never really hated Led Zep the way they've hated units like Chicago, ELO, or Emerson Lake & Palmer; Zeppelin was just resented", and resented simply because despite their numero uno popularity, they're fundamentally so damned uninteresting to write about. Nearly all of the mavens (Christgau, Marcus, Landau) have written memorably about the Stones, but I've never read any analysis of Zeppelin which made them sound more provocative than the Doobie Brothers, BTO, Bad Company, or any of those other applause-machine bands that I assiduously avoid. Now I understand why: everything Led Zeppelin does is in the grooves, there's no spillover, no sauce for us young dogs to lap up, and the fans they don't car6', they adore music which is so majestically self-contained. Though I enjoy Zeppelin, it's been a while since such hermetic-studio music could have an equally enthralling effect. In fact, it's been a long time been a long time been a been a lonely-lonely-lonely-lonelytifne.
