Tangerine

"Tangerine" is the softest thing on Led Zeppelin III, and Page keeps the seam showing — the track opens with a false start, a few bars counted off and abandoned, before the real take begins. The arrangement is built from layered acoustic twelve-string and a pedal steel that Page played himself with more feeling than technique, its bends sliding slightly flat in a way that reads as ache rather than error. The tempo is unhurried, the mix warm and close, with none of the band's usual thunder; Bonham brushes rather than strikes. Plant sings in a restrained middle register, and the harmony vocals in the chorus give it an almost folk-revival roundness. Lyrically it's a memory of a lost love, written years earlier during Page's Yardbirds period — "measuring a summer's day" against a woman who's gone — and it never resolves into either bitterness or hope, just the fact of remembering. Its context is the acoustic turn the band took after decamping to a Welsh cottage, a move that confused fans expecting more volume and turned out to be the album's most durable gesture. Best in late afternoon, alone, with something you've decided not to be sad about anymore.