Robert Plant has never been interested in standing still. “Saving Grace”, released in September, captures the latest phase of his long post-Zeppelin journey: a return to these islands and a period of exploration since 2019 with a band assembled for feel rather than flash.
At the Usher Hall, that album’s spirit translates into a performance built on restraint, shared space and carefully chosen songs.
The album, and the band, take their name from that journey. Songs have been shaped and recorded in the Welsh borders, territory Plant knows and loves, and the English Cotswolds. Onstage tonight, the material is presented with care rather than spectacle. Plant shares the spotlight with Suzi Dian, whose vocals and accordion are central to the group’s sound. Dressed simply in black, they guide the audience through a set of reimagined folk, blues and spirituals, threaded with a handful of Led Zeppelin songs chosen not for bombast but resonance.
“Ramble On”, inspired by “The Lord of the Rings”, is greeted like an old friend. Plant speaks of “finding salvation”, recalling how Led Zeppelin played this very hall back in February 1970, when he was a young singer still searching for direction. More than 55 years on, he closes his eyes and smiles, older, wiser, and now resembling the venerable wizard of Tolkien’s world. When Dian tells the audience that Plant can see into the soul, you believe her.
He recalls plans to become an accountant before music, and the alternative mindset of America’s West Coast that pulled him in a “radical” new direction. That thread is picked up during a cover of Moby Grape’s “It’s a Beautiful Day Today”, offered alongside a knowing nod to current anxieties in American politics. The song’s gentle plea to appreciate the earth’s beauty lands with renewed relevance.
Plant and Dian’s voices blend beautifully throughout, the band’s intricate, sympathetic playing creating a hushed, spellbound atmosphere. At times Plant steps back entirely, listening as Dian leads a delicate rendition of Gillian Welch’s “Orphan Girl”. When he returns for “Four Sticks”, it carries absolute conviction.
The Zeppelin selections are thoughtfully chosen. “Friends” from the third album and “The Rain Song” from “Houses of the Holy”, with their alternative tunings and modal shifts, fit “Saving Grace” perfectly. This is not about looking back. Plant has drawn these songs into the emotional and musical landscape of where he is now. At moments his delivery edges towards a jazz-inflected croon, surprising but effective.
And yet there are flashes of the old iconography. Plant gripping the microphone lead in one of his familiar poses, bathed in turquoise light, hitting every note. They pass quickly, transient moments in a set defined by light and shade. “It’s been a long time,” he says, as the audience stamp, clap and shout for “Percy” before an inspired encore.
This is not nostalgia dressed up as reinvention, nor a legacy artist trading on past glories. Instead, “Saving Grace” reveals an artist still listening, to the land, to the songs and to the musicians around him wherever he roams. Plant has never chased easy applause or obvious encores. “Everybody’s Song” is a weighty, resolute choice with which to finish.
What remains unmistakable is the voice: weathered, expressive, and still capable of reminding us what brought us here in the first place. Nobody sounds like Robert Plant.
More than five decades on, he stands not as a monument to rock history, but as a living, searching presence, curious, generous, and quietly compelling.
