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Robert Plant’s Saving Grace featuring Suzi Dian

Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow

Four stars

 

“We’re Saving Grace,” says a playful Robert Plant midway through a set of lesser known folk, blues and rock-pop covers presented with the superlative quintet the former Led Zeppelin vocalist turned global village explorer has been playing with for more than half a decade. “We’ve come to help.”

 

By this time in the Glasgow leg of what has been dubbed the Ding Dong Merrily tour to accompany the release of the band’s eponymous named album, Plant and co have sauntered through Kentucky blues, English trad, contemporary Americana and more. This wide reaching songbook has been brought to life by way of a meticulously arranged mix of Tony Kelsey’s acoustic and electric guitars, Matt Worley’s banjo, Barney Morse-Brown’s cello and Suzi Dian’s accordion, all powered by Oli Jefferson’s skittering drums.

 

The heart of this on versions of Addie Graham’s The Very Day You’re Gone and English folk song The Cuckoo is Plant’s vocal duets with Dian, which add an understated drama to arrangements that seem to leap continents with each layered melody.

 

When Dian takes the lead on Martha Scanlan’s Higher Rock, her voice beguiles with a Maria McKee-like reach before Plant adds sprinkles of blues harp. Dian sounds even better on Gillian Welch’s Orphan Girl, while Worley takes lead vocal on Blind Willie Johnson’s Soul of a Man.

 

Taking a step back like this is all part of Plant’s charm, as he becomes MC, curator and raconteur, joining the dots on his musical past from playing working men’s clubs to everything that followed. While never mentioning them by name, this includes his old band, whose Ramble On from Led Zeppelin ll is reinvented with a galloping jazziness complete with an accordion solo from Dian, while Morse-Brown plays bass on his cello in a way that sounds not unlike something from Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks album. This is followed by The May Queen, from Plant’s 2017 Carry Fire album, and later Four Sticks from Led Zeppelin lV, featuring more accordion flourishes from Dian.

 

While Plant’ s old school rasp makes intermittent appearances on his own songs, for the main he’s content to keep things on the lowdown in what is essentially a travelogue of traditions, genres and arcane folklore remade in his band’s image. As perfectly executed as it is, the air on stage is of a pub session writ large, with Plant bantering with the audience before going all the way back to the hippy fragility of Moby Grape’s It’s a Beautiful Day Today. 

 

Things crank up on Down to the Sea, from Plant’s Fate of Nations album, with Dian’s accordion taking a trippy turn. Trad Irish song As I Roved Out is driven by Morse-Brown’s ferocious cello, while Dian leads on Neil Young’s For the Turnstiles before the main set ends with a bouncy version of Led Zeppelin lll’s Friends.

 

An encore of The Rain Song, from Houses of the Holy, is followed by a self-deprecating show of gratitude from Plant for the rapturous reception it receives. The taut thrash of Low’s Everybody’s Song that follows builds to an urgent whirligig that makes for a raucous end to a night that makes one hope Saving Grace will be mining such musical wonders a while yet. Long may they ramble on.


The Herald, December 19th 2025

 

ends


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