Facebook Twitter Email

Robert Plant may be reluctant to revisit his early days in Led Zeppelin, telling Rolling Stone earlier this year that he is not part of a jukebox, but the singer seems to have enjoyed a trip back to the area of western England where he grew up. In a three-minute clip titled “Returning to the Borders: A Short Film” to support his upcoming record with the Sensational Shape Shifters, Lullaby and…the Ceaseless Roar, he explained the effect looking back had on him.

“To come back to the Welsh borders and to the hills and the valleys and the friends and confidants, it’s been something I didn’t imagine when I was out there in Mississippi and Texas,” he said in the video, premiered by Amazon Music. “These songs are an ode to life and love and the fragile adventure you set out upon unknowingly and unwittingly.”

The video begins by showing Plant walking through a verdant field, as he explains his need to return to the peace of the area. Previously, he had been spending time in the American South, trying to draw from its character, but he says the music on Lullaby and…the Ceaseless Roar connects that region to where he grew up. “I wrote the lyrics for this piece against an amazing link to those days, back there in the Thirties and Forties, when Clarksdale [Mississippi] was the center of the black revolution in music, before the Great Migration up to Chicago.”

The video also offers clips of songs beyond the already released “Rainbow” that will appear on the upcoming record. In May, Plant told Rolling Stone that Lullaby and…the Ceaseless Roar would be a “celebratory record.” “It’s very crunchy and gritty, very West African and very Massive Attack-y,” he said. “There’s a lot of bottom end, so it might sound all right at a Jamaican party, but I’m not sure it would sound all right on NPR.”