Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters

Since the break-up of Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant has done as good a job as could have been expected of following up a career with a group for whom words like 'pioneering', and 'seminal' are barely enough.

It's a little-known fact that Plant nearly gave up music altogether, and got as far as being accepted onto a teacher training course before recording Pictures at Eleven with Phil Collins in 1982. Three decades of solo success have followed, and 2006's acclaimed collaboration with Alison Kraus, Raising Sand - curated by the legendary T-Bone Burnett and Album of the Year at the 2009 Grammy's – reminded the world of his enduring talent as a solo artist quite apart from the bombastic proto-metal that made his name.

For his latest album, Lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar, Plant has returned to the band that supported him through most of the noughties, Strange Sensations, now rebooted as The Sensational Space Shifters, an ensemble featuring members drawn from worlds as disparate as Britpop, modern jazz and north African poetry – former members of Portishead also swell the ranks.

The album is a swirling testament to the myriad of styles mastered and displayed by the band's members, with Plant's voice an airy, soaring constant, but so far the live show has satisfied diehard Zep fans too, with renditions of 'Whole Lotta Love' and 'Going to California' on the setlist. In the 80s and 90s he refused to ever revisit the Led Zeppelin years as a solo artist, but with three decades of genre-spanning success as a solo artist between then and now, and with a talented band settled in behind him, Plant clearly now feels comfortable blending old sounds with new, for what is guaranteed to be an unforgettable show.