A sampler that goes for bombast, forgoing the deep cuts.
Zep was AOR. Until 1990, they shied away from releasing compilations. Funny how time slips away – and the greed of the Zeppelin trust cashes in.
And, if you ask me, Mothership doesn’t do them justice. The overview is nice, but it slights the band. It slights their audience.
Folks, this is the premier rock group. With one clean fall of the hammer of the gods, they fell all pretenders. Singly, some of these songs capture the power and the range in all its glory – the mythic, full-blooded pomp – but let’s talk sense. If you dig even one song, you don’t have to be told to dive into their relatively small catalog. “Hits” implies misses – or that the stuff you hear on the radio is the only stuff they did that is worth hearing. The notion underrates them.
So: the music gets an A+, the packaging gets an A, and the utility gets a B. The pointlessness of it all merits a C – or, depending on your point of view, an A+.
Rating: B+
