Greta Van Fleet's Misty Mountain Revival

How four Michigan kids are reclaiming the sounds of the Seventies

- Brian Hiatt

THE FOUR MEMBERS OF the Michigan band Greta Van Fleet look, act and sound like they were grown in the lab of some classic-rock-loving mad scientist. How else to explain a group of kids who go around dropping references to Vanilla Fudge’s Carmine Appice and Free’s Paul Kossoff, who cover Fairport Convention and Howlin’ Wolf – and who, by the way, make huge, throwback, blues-riff-riding rock that often sounds preposterously, uncannily close to newly unearthed Led Zeppelin tracks? “We are like a bunch of old men,” acknowledges pixieish, curlyheaded frontman Josh Kiszka, possessor of a blowtorch of a high tenor, with casual access to notes that Robert Plant misplaced during the Carter administration.

The singer, who was starring in high school plays not long ago, is sipping tea on an early-December afternoon in the band’s dressing room at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, sporting the same college production-of-Hair look he’ll wear onstage tonight for a sold-out show: blouse-y kurta, ankle-high jeans, moccasins, a tribal necklace he believes to be African in origin. (“He’s always worn weird shit,” says Jake Kiszka, the band’s longhaired, justifiably self-assured guitarist, who’s more of a T-shirt-and-skinny-jeans guy.)