MY girlfriend refers to the (still) lion-maned frontman of Led Zeppelin as "Planty", which has always seemed to me a little chummy for a legendarily priapic rock god likely to undress her with the merest glance.

But while it would be wrong to classify the new album he has made with his UK musical associates as any way "domestic", there is something homely about this Wales and Wiltshire-recorded set of tunes, whose disparate influences range freely across the singer's long career.

Those include the desert Africa excursion he embarked on with Jimmy Page, as well the Leadbelly strains that informed the pair's very earliest heavy rock blues, and the misty Snowdonian mysticism that crept in between the riffs later.

Plant's world music is a weird mix all right, but with each recent release it has become increasingly personal and distinctive, just as his voice becomes less of a roar and more of an intimate dreamy whisper.

Another important aspect of Robert Plant's current trajectory, and prolific output, is that it surely makes any chance of a Zep arena tour playing the Four Symbols album from soup to nuts look ever more remote. If you don't think that a good thing, you need your ears seen to.