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CD review: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
Robert Plant/Alison Krauss
“Raising Sand” (Rounder)
Four stars.
As insane as the pairing might seem to the regular listener, a Robert Plant and Alison Krauss team-up makes a musical sense that becomes more logical the more you listen to the lovely “Raising Sand.”
Both Plant and Krauss bent genres as they saw fit. Plant morphed American blues into stomping, high-octane British rock, while Krauss proved herself as good a fiddle player as anyone in the bluegrass business before selling millions of albums on the strength of great playing, smartly chosen material and pop-savvy production. Plant knows how to temper his vocal instrument to folkier material (see also much of “Led Zeppelin III”) and Krauss can sing pretty much anything decently, if often without heat.
While this is clearly a project record, it’s not really a duet album in the harmonizing-along-with-whomever and-whatever sense (see also most of Emmylou Harris’s career, sadly).
These gauzy, elliptical arrangements of songs such as Gene Clark’s “Polly,” Sam Phillips’ “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” and the Everly Brothers’ “Gone Gone Gone” aren’t in the tradition of either performer (KGSR has been playing the heck out of the latter song).
In fact, it recalls the knowing covers and late-summer vibe on Yo La Tengo’s 1990 classic “Fakebook.” Call this “Fakebook” for the Starbucks customer.
They are, however, in the tradition of producer T-Bone Burnett, whose fingerprints are all over this puppy. Her’s sort of the roots rock Daniel Lanois these days, the mark of quality for a project that needs a certain sonic cachet — his productions always scream “good taste,” which his albums often err on the side of.
But he does know how to facilitate intimacy — rarely has either performer sounded so naked. Townes Van Zandt’s “Nothin’” — with Marc Ribot’s searing, fuzzy guitar and Plant’s sexy, blues-whisper vocal — sounds like the sort of mezmerizing music Zep itself might be making in ‘07.
“Please Read the Letter,” on the other hand, is the sort of music Zep (or, rather, Page and Plant) made on “Walking to Clarksville.” Krauss and Plant turn it into a plaintive split, grim yet mature. Adults of all ages will love it. All of it.
Comments
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By douglas lee wilson
October 23, 2007 6:26 PM | Link to this
I’M A FAN LOVED IT
By Tom Ordon
October 24, 2007 8:11 AM | Link to this
Polly is a Gene Clark song, not Gram Parsons. Thanks, Tom Ordon Gene Clark Fan Club Taylor, Texas
By Wayne
October 26, 2007 10:15 PM | Link to this
Plant and Krauss’s new album Raising Sand Rocks! errrr you know what I mean.