Robert Plant - Digging Deep (8 X 7") - 45RPM

Robert Plant’s Digging Deep: Subterranea lands like a well-thumbed diary, the kind you pull from a shelf and instantly fall back into. Issued October 2, 2020 on Plant’s Es Paranza imprint, this career-spanning set gathers three decades of work into a narrative that actually breathes. It came on 2CD and as a generous 4LP, which matters, because this is a story best told over sides. If you’re hunting for Robert Plant vinyl, this is the one that earns its space.

The hook is obvious. Two new tracks anchor the set, and they’re not throwaways. “Charlie Patton Highway (Turn It Up — Part 1)” rides a dusty groove that nods to Delta ghosts while locking into that modern, wide-open feel Plant honed with the Sensational Space Shifters. It is searching music, curious and light on its feet, sung in that late-period voice that favors grain and implication rather than air-raid siren power. The other new cut, “Nothing Takes the Place of You,” returns to the 1967 Toussaint McCall heartbreaker. Plant doesn’t oversing it. He leans into patience, lets the organ linger, and finds the quiet drama that made the original so devastating. Both songs fit the set’s title, Digging Deep, with an almost cheeky precision.

The real joy comes from the way these discs move through time. Early on, the hits glide past like old friends. “Big Log” still feels like a mirage on the highway, its Linn rhythms and liquid guitar from Robbie Blunt turning a slow song into a travelogue. “In the Mood” follows with that sly swing, an early sign that Plant would chase groove and atmosphere as much as volume. By the time “Tall Cool One” shows up, all cocky strut and cheeky Led Zeppelin samples, you hear a solo artist willing to hold his past at arm’s length and play with it, rather than hide from it. “Ship of Fools” gives you the opposite impulse, a sea-bound ballad that proves how strong his melodic instincts stayed once the arena lights faded.

The 90s material holds up beautifully. “Hurting Kind (I’ve Got My Eyes on You)” is as punchy as anything from the era, and “29 Palms” has that desert shimmer that always made it feel like a postcard from a place you could almost reach. Then the set tilts toward his great second act. “Angel Dance,” a Los Lobos tune recast with Buddy Miller, Patty Griffin, and a lean Band of Joy engine, signals the shift. Less bombast, more song. You can hear the trail from Dreamland and Mighty ReArranger through to lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar, where “Rainbow” drifts in on a pulse that suggests North Africa, the British Isles, and a beat-up club PA, all at once. Carry Fire adds the last glow, the proof that his curiosity hasn’t dimmed.

Part of the fun is tracing the players. When Justin Adams and John Baggott enter the picture, the rhythmic architecture changes. When Buddy Miller is in the room, the guitars scrape and testify. Plant always knew how to pick a band, and the compilation quietly shows that as much as any single tune. The sequencing helps too. It never gets stuck in one era for long, so you feel the connections across albums rather than a strict march through years.

If you followed Plant’s Digging Deep podcast when it launched in 2019, this set feels like a companion piece, a tangible version of those track-by-track stories. And if you didn’t, the music still tells the tale. The critical reception focused on the new material, but what lingers is the throughline. Plant keeps testing his voice against old shapes and new rhythms, curious about where they meet.

On vinyl, the flow makes extra sense. Side breaks give “Big Log” and “Ship of Fools” room to echo, then let “Angel Dance” snap you awake. If you’re looking to buy Robert Plant records online, this anthology makes an easy case for starting with a broad canvas before dropping into full albums. It also sits nicely next to other Robert Plant albums on vinyl, especially the late-era highlights. I found my copy flipping in a Melbourne record store, and it’s the kind of thing I recommend all the time to folks digging through bins for 80s curios or contemporary folk-blues. Even for crate diggers in the vinyl records Australia scene, Digging Deep: Subterranea vinyl feels like a smart score rather than a redundancy.

Great compilations don’t just collect songs, they reframe them. This one does, with care and a little wanderlust, the way Plant’s best work always has.