Led Zeppelin II (1969)

It's much easier for me to see now that this is likely the inferior album compared to the debut, if one of them has to be considered inferior. But it was the first Led Zeppelin album I acquired, in thrall to "Whole Lotta Love," and I had never before heard anything remotely like it. Once again the sound is just as big as it can be, colossal, a veritable sperm whale roaming the depths, breaching the surfaces bristling with guitar riffs and pyrotechnics, Robert Plant's unholy shrieking, and a drumkit as big as any room you play it in, as big as the inside of your head, pounding away relentlessly. I thought it was so good, in fact, that I started to wonder what the critics in "Rolling Stone" were complaining about so much. I still wonder, in many ways—not the same things I complain about now anyway, that's for sure. The songs are shorter; only one ranges over six minutes. I miss the willingness to take them out, not that the impulse is necessarily in short supply. Even the psychedelic passage of "Whole Lotta Love" satisfies the desire, and the pivots and turns are there all the way through this. But the most memorable song here after "Whole Lotta Love" may be "Heartbreaker" and very little else, even as the other shards and fragments of the skimmed cream of jam sessions serve their purposes. It's hardly unlistenable, and beyond "Moby Dick" it rarely feels padded out, put it that way. But as with eating empty calories the pleasures tend to be fleeting and the appetite not quite satisfied, even with a stomach painfully distended. I might have worn out my first copy of Led Zeppelin II, but it was as much about engaging with the ideas it suggested as with the sounds and tones actually set down. That and playing "Whole Lotta Love" until it was a grayish band of vinyl compared to the other tracks on the LP. Even as it remains a deeply ingrained favorite, I can see it's probably not the right place to start with Led Zeppelin. On the other hand, if you have three Led Zeppelin albums I can't see how this isn't one of them.