(What Is And What Should Never Be) In The Case Of Greta Van Fleet
Their name is Greta Van Fleet and they sound a lot like Led Zeppelin. If you know anything about this young Detroit band’s tale then it is that. Comprised of three brothers and a mate, the lads got some decent hype off the back of a pair of EPs last year and almost as quickly they developed a reputation. See, they really do sound a lot like Led Zeppelin. Even Robert Plant’s noticed it.
Greta Van Fleet’s debut album, screechingly titled ‘Anthem of the Peaceful Army’, came out in October and, mate, it did not go down well. Pitchfork absolutely savaged it with a 1.6 rating, which is exactly the kind of thing that Pitchfork would do once they sense the uncool factor has arisen around a band, while old mate Needlethony Droptano went with the NOT GOOD label reserved for the worst of the worst. Other outlets were more appreciative. Two and a half stars out of five on AllMusic. Three starts on Rolling Stone. Three stars on NME.
The problem with reviewing this album is that you really cannot escape the narrative. It’s impossible to listen objectively to something which you’ve been told from the start is derivative. The Led Zeppelin thing might as well be tattooed on their foreheads, all those reviews mentioned above? Every single one drops the Hammer of the Gods on them with the Led Zepp stuff. Rolling Stone, a publication kinda reliant on the ongoing survival of classic rock relevance, thought it was a pleasant homage. AllMusic called it cosplay. And this is how the Pitchfork massacre begins:
“Greta Van Fleet sound like they did weed exactly once, called the cops, and tried to record a Led Zeppelin album before they arrested themselves. The poor kids from Frankenmuth, Michigan don’t even realize they’re more of an algorithmic fever dream than an actual rock band. While they’re selling out shows all over the world, somewhere in a boardroom, a half-dozen people are figuring out just how, exactly, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant are supposed to fit into the SUV with the rest of the Greta Van Fleet boys on “Carpool Karaoke.””
Yikes, that’ll leave a mark.
Exactly how much does Greta Van Fleet sound like Led Zeppelin? Oh pretty much in every single way possible. The walls of guitar, it’s pure Jimmy Page. - even down to the blues licks and anthemic solos. The drummer’s got some work to do to get anywhere near accurately mimicking John Bonham but he still hits the kit pretty hard, which is the first step. Then there’s the singer, Josh Kizka, with his baby’s and ooh-oohs and the banshee wails. But the imitation goes much deeper than that. Their lyrics are full of hippie-Tolkien yarns. Hair is worn long and the dress code is Cosmic Dragon Celtic Americana. There’s even literally a line about the land of ice and snow in the first song of the new album - as if they’re mooning everyone from the other side of the classroom window.
It’s a noble enough thing to frame your band as modern missionaries for the gospel of classic rock but this is too much, it’s disconcerting. Having a major label push behind them makes it even worse because these lads already looked like the leads in Led Zeppelin: A Broadway Musical and you chuck that commercial backing under them and, honestly, it feels like a forgery. I guess that’s what Pitchfork were getting at with the algorithmic thing (which is ironic because it’s pretty on brand for Pitchfork to stick their namesake into a perceived industry plant like that).
But none of that gets at whether the music is any good or not. Instead that’s all about image and pose... which makes me wonder whether or not it’s possible to make a great piece of art without having any original ideas and, to be honest, I’m not sure that it is. There are plenty of great albums which are based upon older traditions and sounds – nothing’s created in a vacuum after all, and there’s a difference between influence and straight up shoplifting – but in my mind at least those albums are great because of what they brought to those traditions and sounds, how they updated the form. Something that Greta Van Fleet have no current intention of doing.
Of course, another great irony here is that Led Zeppelin were the kings of all thieves. They ripped off Willie Dixon, they ripped off Howlin’ Wolf, they ripped off Bert Jansch, they ripped off Spirit, they ripped off Moby Grape, they ripped off Ritchie Valens… there’s a whole wiki about their uncredited stolen sounds/words and they’re still, four decades later, getting sued for it. But see when Led Zeppelin covered a Willie Dixon song they still sounded undeniably like Led Zeppelin. It was a unique blending of those ideas, channelled through a definitive image and pose. Their own image and pose, not somebody else’s. Updating the form.
I love Led Zeppelin and I have done since I stole my dad’s Remasters album at the age of 15 (which was pretty soon before the Mothership compo came out, so I soon got my own – every generation gets a remastered Led Zeppelin compilation, after all). For me, that was the origin point. Led Zeppelin got me into old blues music, they got me into classic rock, they got me into hard rock, they got me to read Lord of the Rings again (to be fair, I’d already polished that one off in intermediate school as the films were coming out). They also probably got me into tight jeans and open-buttoned shirts and into occultish lore and celtic symbolism.
I didn’t hate those Greta Van Fleet EPs either. I thought they were catchy, interesting, quirky and deferential. What I didn’t expect was to listen to the new album and find them going even deeper down that well (the devil’s in his hooooole). It’s like… I couldn’t even finish it. It hurt me to listen after about twenty minutes. And I don’t wanna be a dick here but that’s just the truth. There’s a quality band in here, they’re pretty proficient at what they do, but maybe they need to go hit the clubs for a few years and figure out who they are because this is too much. Fifty full minutes of Led Zepp cosplay is too much. What worked on an EP quickly loses its charm on a full-length.
And the singer is just unbearable after a while, which is a bummer to have to say but I’m only being honest. The dude sounds like a replica of Robert Plant for sure… except Robert Plant has more than one trick in his bag. Robert Plant can sing soft and low, he can sing smooth and middling, he can howl at the night’s moon like a wolf in heat. This dude has the howl down pat and that’s all. There’s no variety to it, he just screams over bloody everything. Dunno if he wrote the lyrics too but less said about that tripe the better.
Also, need I say it that Robert Plant oozed sex appeal. Jimmy Page oozed sex appeal (albeit in a more dangerous, heroin addicted way – but he’s the one with all the kinky groupie stories). Greta Van Fleet aren’t sexy in the slightest. There’s an episode of Black Mirror in which this woman loses her husband in a car crash and, grieving, she eventually signs up to this programme that sends her an exact robotic replica of him which has been stocked up with all his social media so it can replicate his voice and personality. And things are all good for a while, the shame of her grief aside. Until she realises that his social media self is not his real self, it’s only the side of himself that he’d presented to the world. It had no substance. It had no heart. It had no soul. It’s an absolutely incredible bit of telly, Hayley Atwell and Domnhall Gleeson are the leads, go check it out. Anyway, that’s what Greta Van Fleet is to Led Zeppelin. A hollow shell of a surface level imitation based on first impressions and public reputations. Greta Van Fleet is to Led Zeppelin what water is to whiskey.
So, no, I’m not a fan of this record. I’m open to the possibility of this lot making quality music down the track but it ain’t gonna happen until they find themselves amidst costumes and stage plays. But I don’t necessarily blame them for that, I blame the industry suits who think that mining the commercial potential of a Led Zeppelin knock-off is more worthwhile than encouraging someone to take that legacy and do their own thing with it. Maybe GVF don’t have the songwriting in them, I dunno, but it’s better to try to do something great and fail than to settle for something average at best.
And why do we need another Led Zeppelin anyway? That’s the most offensive thing of all, the idea that I, as a consumer, would be interested in a pale imitation of something that is very readily accessible to me already. I have the box set of records. I have the DVDs. I have access to YouTube. There’s no reason, no goddamn reason, why I need another Led Zeppelin when I already have the original one.
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