Like the mid-70s bloat that whelped punk, and the post-grunge end-of-the-century vacuum that delivered TV On The Radio, The Yeah Yeahs Yeahs, The White Stripes and The Strokes, a new rawk day seems to be a-dawnin’ in this manicured pop moment. You hear it in a surge of potent woman-led indie acts, in mainstream country artists channeling heartland rock, in Americana bands re-purposing Southern rock. With Greta Van Fleet and The Struts — somewhat startlingly — you hear it in undiluted, largely-unironic classic rock, a style of music that keeps getting written off as irrelevant, even as it never quite goes away.
Greta Van Fleet seem like they lept fully-formed from the skull of a rock critic in 1975. Three brothers and a bud from a tourist town near Saginaw, Michigan, they come bearing shamelessly recycled Zeppelin-isms with a frontman who seems to have heard Rush’s “2112” a few times. Generations of hair-metal bands, parodists like Spinal Tap, post-modernists like the White Stripes, and script-flippers from Heart to Dread Zeppelin are history to them. They were roughly kindergarten-aged when School Of Rock premiered, and never had to wonder “what about the voice of Geddy Lee?” — evidently, they just thought it was rad. MORE