This album could have been so great. Houses of the Holy, Trampled Underfoot and the monumental Kashmir - three songs that alone would have guaranteed Physical Graffiti a masterpiece-status, if that would have been all there was.
Sadly they decided to make a double-LP, which meant that the other, roughly three quarters of the runtime had to be filled as well... somehow.
The result is a at times brilliant and exciting (as aforementioned songs document), at times terribly meandering and aimless record. Great material, like In My Time Of Dying get dragged out and swamped seemingly endlessly without any need. And its not doing the songs a favour really. A lot of the material on Physical Graffiti could have worked in half its run-time and maybe preserved more of its emotional impact in the process.
And that's the tragedy of this album: It shows that Led Zeppelin indeed could have lived up to their own standards with wonderfully crafted songs and their feel for melody and their distinctive inventiveness - just by far not often enough. The album as a whole is just way too rambling and meandering. One could think that half the time they just kept the tape recorder running and jammed along. A pity, since it makes Physical Graffiti feel uninspired and yes, tired.
At least this makes the few good songs in it really stand out:
I agree with the sentiment of this review. Not one of Zep's strongest efforts (I'd rank it somewhere between III and Presence.) It's a bit of a disjointed efffort. Perhaps the bar was elevated a bit with the goodness that was Houses and IV as even Zep's filler is better than many bands hits.
AntwortenLöschenI think indeed the album was just that: some proper songs and a lot of filling material, often consisting of "unreleased" material. Unreleased means usually originally rejected and now recycled.
AntwortenLöschenThats generally a pitfall artists tend to step into after a while. Crap remains crap whether you recycled it, or not ;)