Robert Plant and The Sensational Space Shifters @ O2 Academy, Glasgow, 15 November

“I fucking love bingo!” The original rock god returns with a twist – acknowledging the Academy’s decades as a Mecca while welcoming his pensionable status with open arms. Navigating a minefield of media-constructed conjecture geared towards wishing his old band back to life (like last week’s tabloid porky, which claimed he tore up an $800m dollar contract to reconvene Led Zeppelin for a whistlestop international tour), the resilient Robert Plant ploughs forward through a successful ‘Nashville period’ to find critical (if not necessarily commercial) success in compelling new work. From the pulsating breakbeat and chicken-pickin’ motif at the heart of Little Maggie to the shimmering introspection and orchestral gravitas of Embrace Another Fall, Lullaby… and the Ceaseless Roar is an unassailable confirmation that Percy’s mojo can keep on rising.

The hum and shriek of that voice is remarkably well preserved; full-spirited but restrained when the song demands. His collaborators in 2014 – comprising desert blues specialist Justin Adams and Gambian griot Juldeh Camara, through Massive Attack keyboardist John Baggott, BEAK>’s Billy Fuller and Cast guitarist/latter-day Rick Rubin hair-alike Liam “Skin” Tyson – The Sensational Space Shifters bring a worldly-wise sense of adventure in their own right, contemporising all four corners of Plant’s unwieldy catalogue with inspired left turns. “Welcome,” he begins, “to a departure from whatever you thought this was gonna be.”

With an easy chemistry and a convivial atmosphere falling quickly into place, Friends kicks off a surprisingly Zep-friendly set, taking stylistic detours through glorious overhauls of IV’s countrified ballad Going to California and II’s towering southern rock epic, What Is And What Should Never Be. Bukka White’s delta blues standard Fixin’ to Die – one of the few constant survivors in the setlist througout Zeppelin and Plant’s various evolutions – is given a dusting down and a cosmic makeover. Tambourines come clattering off the drum riser as a slick rendition of Whole Lotta Love drops like an a-bomb – the Space Shifters’ reclaiming its primal power after too many years on Top of the Pops. 'I hear there's a gig called T in the Park up here,” he jokes, surely aware he can still decimate most of its headliners. “Do they do anything for OAPs? No? Well fuck ‘em,”

There’s a unanimous reverence for the encore as Plant requests some quiet and A Stolen Kiss reveals itself as the clear centrepiece, its slow-burning ambient drone calmly ushering his soul-searching ruminations on the meaning of it all to a moving end. Lifting the tempo one last time, Rock And Roll is battered out with the conviction of a younger frontman still hungry for the thrill. “Fuckin’ marvellous!” he booms, like he finally called house. “Next week, Whitesnake!”