A Sandy Mixture

Raising Sand
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
Rounder Records
11661-9075-2

***

I was a bit skeptical of this release when I caught wind of it a couple months ago. I'm a big fan of Alison Krauss, and I think she has carved out a distinctive niche for herself, a place that is not restrictive of her talents and versatility but is nonetheless pretty confidently circumscribed. This pairing with Robert Plant, the famous vocalist from the early hard rock band Led Zeppelin, seemed a defiant step outside her comfort zone. Her voice is pure and angelic, quite a contrast to the wounded-animal howl of Plant, and after her duets with aging rocker John Waite on her last album--a pairing which I felt did not work for her--I wondered whether she were really cut out for harder material.

Well, I may have had the wrong end of the stick in this case; I needn't have worried. This pairing works much better than I expected, chiefly to the exact extent that Plant has wandered afield from what I was prepared for. That said, I'm really not familiar with Led Zeppelin or whatever of Robert Plant's solo career may have followed the band's demise. But this material is much closer to Alison's milieu than what I imagine his to be. Looking on Wikipedia now, it seems he is renowned for his ability to play a wide range of styles, so maybe this pairing with Alison Krauss is surprising to me only because of my limited knowledge of Plant. Whatever, it seems to work.

Much of the album is quiet and contemplative, sometimes extremely so. Famed producer T. Bone Burnett has given the singers a very dry and sparse backing, some tracks sounding like little more than 2-track demos recorded in someone's basement. Things are closely recorded, but there is a conspicuous absence of lushness or smoothness to how the sound has been captured and processed. And much of the instrumental playing is so subdued and elementary that it sounds almost hillbilly-primitive. Plant lets his vocals go a couple times just a bit, and in those moments his stylistic identity--and the weight of several decades of his presence in rock music--comes careening to the fore, but just as quickly he's back to practically whispering over what sounds like barely-played accompaniment. This peculiar lack of energy does not translate into a lack of vitality, exactly, but the result is so quietly nuanced that it takes rapt attention to hear the details. I can't decide just yet whether those details pay off adequately for the effort.

Alison does what Alison always does, singing her angelic song and, on several tracks, playing her plaintive fiddle. Krauss and Plant each take a solo turn or two, but most of the time it's Alison singing harmony for Plant. With vocal harmonies a pointed specialty of Krauss's band, Union Station, she seems very well prepared for this role.

But the aftertaste is of the striking sparseness of the tracks, and of the conspicuous absence of sonic luxury. Not to say that I'm oblivious to the beauty of a simple, well-turned phrase or a melodic idea in isolation, but my preference for more worked-out compositions causes me to take a wait-and-see attitude on this album.

Dancing With Death

Alison Krauss
A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection
Rounder Records CDROUN0555 / 0 11661 0555 2 0

***
Alison Krauss has recorded with a lot of people over the years, but she's usually connected with her band, Union Station. Union Station have produced a bunch of consistently high-quality records over the last decade, and my introduction came by way of a double-disc release from 2002 of the group playing live in Louisville, of all places. Turns out, I think I was here in town on the day in question, but I was only dimly aware of her at the time. Like many people, I became more aware of her from her work on the soundtrack of the Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), and I sought her out after that introduction. The Live in Louisville CD is the one I picked.

Well, that performance is really something. I had not listened much to bluegrass (and some of my friends laughed in disbelief when I mentioned it), but here was an example of the best music transcending genre. They were just so utterly adept at their instruments, and the music was so carefully crafted and flawlessly performed, that I was mesmerized. Each of the band members is at or near the top of the virtuoso list for their particular instrument, and Alison's voice hits a particular sweet spot for me. She and Dan Tyminski (the singing voice in O Brother for George Clooney) harmonize like different lobes of the same brain. The recording, though live, is wonderfully clear and quiet. That disc remains the single most listened to recording on my iTunes (though there are several others nipping at its heels).

Afterward I got all her other recordings, and there's hardly a low spot in the lot. (Ron Block's compositions are almost literally dunked in the blood o' Jesus, making me reach for the 'next' button, but his banjo and guitar playing elsewhere are, well, inspired.) While they play some straightforward banjo-driven bluegrass, much of their music straddles several genres without quite committing: soft rock, quiet ballads, bluegrass, soft country, folk music. They're not blazing any new trails, but they're also not quite playing any of these exactly.

This latest release, A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection, is Alison Krauss without Union Station, though several band members play on some of the songs. There are several duets here, and songs from movie soundtracks and other odds and ends. In spite of the individual recordings having come from different times and places, they have a unity of style one expects from the artist, many having a hymn-like quality.

In her concert banter, Alison has referred to the "sad, pathetic" nature of most of the things they play, and this CD takes that to new extremes. Most everything is downcast, and several things morbidly so. One tune in particular, Jacob's Dream, tells the story of two young boys in 1863 who get separated from their parents and get lost in the woods... where they perish! (You thought there was relief coming, no?) The chorus of the song has the children crying out to their parents for help while they expire in the woods. (Jesus, lady!) Likewise, her duet with Brad Paisley, Whiskey Lullaby, tells of a double-suicide of two lovers who couldn't make things work. Things lighten in tiny steps from these two, but only a little. Simple Love, and the lullaby Baby Mine, let the sun shine a little, but it's more comfort than exuberance. And there is one bona fide bluegrass track, "Sawing on the Strings," which is indistinguishable in its details from a Union Station tune.

I happen to love the dark and tormented in music--it's why I like so much religious music--so what might be off-putting for some is a positive boon for me. And everything is so spectacularly performed and captured that it's hard not to listen enraptured. Jerry Douglas features on a couple tracks, and the sound of his dobro is every nostalgic thing condensed into an electric thread of melancholy that suits this music brilliantly.

There are two duets with John Waite which don't quite work to my ear--the hit I Ain't Missing You, while thematically a good Alison Krauss tune, just doesn't use the attributes of her voice to good effect. But that's two tracks out of 16, which is a pretty good ratio.