#77 - 1975/4: Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
The sleeve: one of the best I've encountered and will encounter in this project. A great photo of a New York tenement with die-cut windows that reveal different occupants based on how you slip in the inner sleeve, what's not to love? OK, the basic look was stolen from a José Feliciano album sleeve, but the execution here is brilliant.
Had I heard this before? No, save for the strings in "Kashmir" as sampled by Puff Daddy.
One of the more interesting things about PG is how it's obviously an inspiration to many hard rock bands of the following decade - if the entire New Wave of British Heavy Metal as well as the Slayer and Metallica strands of thrash had never happened, nothing would be different for Guns'N'Roses; without this album, I wonder how they (and their whole LA/Hollywood hair metal contingent) would have sounded. Anyway, those influences are most apparent on the opening three tracks, which are otherwise (that is, song/hook-wise) rather forgettable, this being especially grating on the 11-minute "In My Time of Dying".
In fact, and sadly so, after Houses of the Holy being one of the major finds of this project, Physical Graffiti is a little closer to how I'd expected to experience Led Zep in the first place. Fittingly, one of my favourite songs here is "Houses of the Holy", indeed recorded for that album but shelved at the time, deemed good enough now on account of there being 4 sides to fill - oh yes, this is a double album, and it feels like one. Not the fault of "Houses", which sounds, as does the album of the same name, effortless, breezy, though not slight. Sadly, many of the other tracks are either needlessly stretched out: "Kashmir" has cool menacing strings and vaguely south Asian melodic touches, but it does not need to be 8 1/2 minutes long, and neither does the song that opens disc 2, "In the Light" - what could have been a charming ballad becomes a slog, and these aren't the only tracks I'd level that criticism at. Stronger tracks are "Trampled Under Foot", essentially the Doobie Brothers' "Long Train Runnin'" for people who can't dance, and the lovely, wispy "Bron-Y-Aur"; side 4 is the most engaging listen - the songs are tighter, the hooks more obvious. All in all, 80 minutes of mostly pretty cool sounds but it feels a little bloaty. Oh well.
[C]
Next up: couldn't drag me away
