It’s hard to ignore the passing of time as another year draws to a close, but for 90 minutes at Symphony Hall Robert Plant did just that. Which is some achievement given the singer turned 77 in August, it’s 45 years since Led Zeppelin called it a day, and he’s now been co-fronting the Saving Grace band for six years - half the time he was in the heavy metal behemoths. Oh, and his current outfit perform songs that range in age “from the 21st to the 17th century” as he helpfully pointed to the Symphony Hall audience to save them doing the maths.

The real trick is that Plant and his outrageously talented band - apparently born of a chance encounter with multi-instrumentalist Matt Worley in a Shropshire pub - make the whole endeavour utterly timeless. The music combines elements of folk, roots, blues, Americana and even a little psych rock, and while it mostly favours acoustic over electric, traditional over contemporary, the mix somehow still sounds fresh in 2025.

I’ll leave the debate over whether time is linear or cyclical to the philosophers, and instead revel in a sublime performance and night of music that will live long in the memory. And it wasn’t all about the Zeppelin tunes either. (Mightily) rearranged versions of Ramble On, Four Sticks, Friends and The Rain Song were all terrific - Plant laughing at the audience’s instalment-like acknowledgment of the first - but more than matched by Soul Of A Man (beautifully reworked from the album version, with Worley on lead vocals), As I Roved Out (utterly mesmerising), Everybody’s Song (a suitably fabulous vocal-duelling finale), and Orphan Girl, a stunning showcase for the beautiful voice of Suzi Dian, who shares singing duties throughout.

The vocalist/accordion player is the lone Brummie in the band, and while Plant initially claimed the members were “all reasonably local”, he later admitted he was from "somewhere else” and then “somewhere awful at the moment” - a reference to the rock bottom state of his beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers. Mercifully there was no time (here we go again…) to dwell on the subject - a token ‘up the Baggies’ heckle instantly rebuked - as the jovial singer and his five-piece entourage cantered through a show that saw each of the band members given a chance to shine. The lighting reflected as much, Plant often disappearing into the shadows to enjoy Dian’s wondrous vocals or the incredible playing of Worsley (banjo), Tony Kelsey (lead guitar), Barney Morse-Brown (cello, doubling as bass) and Oli Jefferson (drums).

Plant himself was also in tremendous form - his voice remains wonderfully well-preserved (not that his current songs require the shrieking of old) - and he also plays a mean harmonica, although the sight of him casually tossing the instrument on the floor only to put it to his lips again later in the night inevitably brought to mind the five-second rule for dropped food.

Not that it should matter given Plant’s apparent ability to manipulate time (or maybe he chucked the mouth organ into a hygienic basket I didn’t see), and while I’d argue the show was over way too soon, maybe it was just right for him? Rather than dwell on the conundrum let’s just say this Grace was amazing.

Five stars

Reviewed by Steve Adams at Symphony Hall, Birmingham on Sunday 14 December.