Robert Plant, the original hippie, has been responsible for all of Led Zeppelin's lyrics, and his peacelove doves and mushy stairways are all over Houses of the Holy. This is the first Zep set where they made the mistake of printing the lyrics; if they hadn't, we might have missed gems like "I got my flower, I got my power," or prime Rowan Brothers stuff like "Hare Hare" and "Singing in the Sunshine, laughing in the rain …"

That kind of stuff may bug you the first few playings if you bother to notice it, but that's not what pulls this album down from being a true masterpiece like their last one. Plant's just the easiest member to pick on, and Houses is as erratic as Zeppelin have been for most of their career. At its peaks it's amazing, but even though the peaks predominate, the valleys are so...