Robert Plant’s dancing days are here again

? There are always going to be echoes of Led Zeppelin in Robert Plant’s solo albums, though there have been times in the 25 years since that group’s demise that the iconic singer has seemed to distance himself from its legacy. Plant’s ninth solo album, “Mighty Rearranger,” his first collection of original material in 12 years, is also the most Zeppelinesque, and on tracks such as “Another Tribe,” “Tin Pan Valley,” “The Enchanter” and the pastoral “All the King’s Horses,” that’s a good thing.

Plant, 56, is right at home again. As he puts it in the album’s pounding anthem “Shine It All Around”: “These are the days of my life/ Bright, strong and golden/ This is the way that I choose when the deal goes down/ This is the world that I love.”

It’s a world Plant’s not alone in, thanks to the Strange Sensation, the band he has been working with since his 2002 album of cover songs, “Dreamland.” Although guitarists Justin Adams and Skin Tyson and drummer Clive Deamer occasionally summon the ghosts of Jimmy Page and the late John Bonham, they come from a very different place.

Adams grew up in the Middle East and has strong Arabic influences, while Tyson came from Brit-pop revivalists Cast. Deamer’s worked with trip-hoppers Portishead and drum ‘n’ bass pioneer Roni Size, keyboard player John Baggott with Portishead and Massive Attack, and bassist Billy Fuller with disco-house combo Fuzz Against Junk, which means a tinge of electronica is added to such familiar Zep-rooted elements as blues bridging North Africa and the Mississippi Delta, Celtic folk majesty and Moroccan roll.

The ethnic-blues-rock brew is particularly strong on “Somebody’s Knockin’,” a rolling Mali-to-Mississippi stomp fueled by fuzzy Moroccan bendir drums and tehardant (an African lute) and “The Enchanter,” a spooky Delta blues fable. Even better (and wonderfully Zeppish) is “Takamba,” whose desert rhythms are juxtaposed against heavy riff-driven guitar blasts, and the propulsive title track, which takes a North African string ripple and layers on primitive John Lee Hooker vamps, Plant’s blues-rock harmonica and a swelling vocal chant to compelling effect.

Other intriguing tracks include the spaghetti-Western guitar-driven gallop of “Let the Four Winds Blow”; the Byrdsian guitar, Grateful Dead serenity and Celtic wonder of “Dancing in Heaven”; and the gorgeous acoustic chamber folk of “All the King’s Horses,” a soft-spun meditation on love that recalls “Going to California.”