Robert Plant has become somewhat of an outlier among his classic-rock peers. He won’t reunite Led Zeppelin. He’s not interested in finding new ways to record different versions of “Stairway to Heaven.” And more so, he’s up for getting a bit weird—evident on his 2014 release lullaby and…the Ceaseless Roar, and his latest album Carry Fire, his 11th solo effort to date. Carry Fire is the second album he’s recorded with his latest band, The Sensational Space Shifters, and it’s an excellent step ahead from where they were with lullaby. Throughout Carry Fire, Plant’s distinct high-pitched vocals intermix with ethereal, spacey arrangements that give off a spooky vibe at times, as on the piano driven “A Way With Words” and the glitchy “Keep It Hid.” There’s hints of his rock-and-roll past, like on the album’s standout track “Season’s Song” and the bluesy-folk opener “The May Queen.” Lyrically, Plant ruminates on lost loves and romance, while at other moments, he seems to be commenting on the state of the universe. On one of the more upbeat rock numbers “New World,” he reflects on colonialism, as he sings of the white man educating the “noble savage.” And in a rather direct comment on today’s topsy-turvy world, Plant sings of border-wall blues in the pounding “Carving Up the World Again…A Wall and Not a Fence.” The lone cover song comes toward the end, a version of Ersel Hickey’s 1957 song “Bluebirds Over the Mountain”—Plant is joined by Pretenders’ vocalist Chrissie Hynde for a duet that features both of their voices singing in unison, with a driving drum beat, some fiddles and atmospheric sounds all blending together. Of course, with Plant, there will always be echoes of his past work lingering around anything he does. But he wants to keep moving forward, and Carry Fire makes the case that he should do so for the foreseeable future.