CD Review: ROBERT PLANT & ALISON KRAUSS - Raising Sand

Produced by T-Bone Burnett

First of all let me preface this by saying that I think T-Bone Burnett is one of the great unsung artists of the past 30 years. Since I first saw his weird stork-like countenance loping around in Bob Dylan's peripheral vision in RENALDO & CLARA. the insanely self-indulgent, wondrously oblique and grandly ambitious film which surreally documented Dylan's ROLLING THUNDER REVUE, I was taken by his sheer musicality and sense of purpose. Whether producing songwriter Peter Case's brilliant self-titled solo debut from, classic records by Elvis Costello (my fave EC record “King of America “ being one), Los Lobos, Roy Orbison, Leo Kottke, The Wallflowers, Counting Crows, or pulling together the surprise hit soundtrack album of 2001, Down From The Mountain: O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU, T-Bone has laid a swatch across the past generation's musicians and fans that has been subtle and surreal in its subversive influence while embracing all that is real, rootsy and left-of-center tasteful.

Wow, I just recalled sitting next to him at lunch before a meet and greet at a record store in Ardmore, PA back in the 1988. I’d been invited by the regional promotions rep for Columbia Records to attend and T-Bone was out promoting his latest record, “Talking Animals.” A fabulous record by the way if you can find a copy. At any rate, all I truly remember is that the dud is incredibly tall and that he and I got into a wonderful conversation about the horrid state of American political leadership (a favorite topic of both of ours) and the importance of a guy like Johnny Cash in bridging the gap between the old world (pre-Dylan) America and the new post-Vietnam era.

OK we won't talk about his incredible but under appreciated solo work. It is often downright impenetrable in it's quirkiness, in nothing but the best sense, mind you. Taking his cues from the most obtuse Dylan moments of dense and just plain odd character studies, tossing edgy political metaphor laced with a very persistent sonic and textural daring, his solo music is an acquired taste. Unfortunately not many record buyers actually acquired them. My favorite is the mostly acoustic self-titled CD from ‘86 and “Proof Through he Night” (1983) is also a keeper.

Which brings us to this new CD by rock icon Robert Plant and new acoustic figurehead Alison Krauss. "What?" was my first reaction. Sounded like a match made in a smoky room at a struggling AAA station trying to find something new to play that didn't alienate either of their audiences of aging boomers or ‘90s fans of female singer-songwriters. Good on paper but I was having a hard time envisioning where these worlds collide.

I recalled Plant and Led Zeppelin III, the album of mostly acoustic, very British folky ditties but it was much rougher hewn than the pristine filigree of Krauss's modernized yet ancient country sensibilities. OK, maybe there were possibilities here. But try as I might hearing a cross between the wailing "Immigrant Song" and the calico earthiness of "Too Late To Cry Now" was still a stretch.

Then I heard T-Bone was in the control room overseeing things and I was sold. Perfect. This MUST be great or at least right up my alley. And I hadn't heard a note when I opened the CD and saw among the players downtown iconoclastic jazz/avant guitarist Marc Ribot aboard (he shares Costello pedigree with T-Bone) as well as folk acoustic legendary string master Norman Blake. I was very intrigued.

Well, if you are looking for Plant’s innovative, improvisatory, verging-on-the-edge-of-disintegrating old-school vocal histrionics that spawned legions of crappy pseudo imitators from under their copy-cat Goldilocks fright wigs, go buy a Zep boxed set. It ain’t here. There are a couple of glimmers of Frodo-meets-Dragonslayer vocal wail but very gracefully appointed.

This is a Plant all about harmony and gentle grace and coming not only directly from the folk music of the British Isles where he got his early lessons but more directly filtered through Krauss’s roots in the American antecedents of those same ballads and reels—the music of Appalachia and Kentucky and West Virginia—the Southern, American roots of what would later leave the farm and head to Nashville and become country music. We also find here the splinters and fingers and streams of the other roots music of the American South—the blues, but not a direct, 12 bar version that inspired Led Zeppelin’s plundering and elongation of the form but the variations that permeated the music of New Orleans and Memphis and Tupelo and Austin. Music that became early R&B and rockabilly and rock and roll. Nothing on the CD really rocks but just seems absolutely well-worn and comfortable.

Krauss, began her recording career as a 14-year old fiddle phenom and who has become in the last ten years one of country music’s most popular purveyors of eclectic stylistic exploration and roots-centric classicism.

All of these links are present here in music that never sounds dusty, antiquated or nostalgic--never anything but fresh and vibrant. This is one gorgeous album of great songs and superlative taste.

Song by song glimpse:

"Rich Woman" opens the album with what may be the bluesiest structure on the disc but more delicate in presentation with Krauss harmonizing to Plant’s soft-pedaled and introspective vocals sung in a smoother, more slippery smoothness than even the crooniest of Plant vehicles we’re used to.

"Killing The Blues" - self-explanatory.

"Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us" - written by T-Bone’s wife and wonderful singer-songwriter Sam Phillips.

“Polly Come Home” - one of two songs here by the great and under appreciated Gene Clark of the Byrds. This is a haunting folk ballad.

“Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On) - T-Bone has long been a huge fan of The Everly Brothers (consider he and Costello’s Cowardly Bros EP from ????). This Phil & Don song is very different from the original with Plant vamping the blues a bit in the spaces between verse and the guitars a bit more distorted than anything thus far.

"Through the Morning, Through The Night" - Gene Clark again. Also from the Dillard & Clark album of the same title, is a forlorn country ballad.

"Please Read The Letter" - oddly enough one of only three or four tunes with Krauss's fiddle, this also features some classic Plant moans and an aching and slow Krauss harmony vocal. What a trademark sound that is. No one can sound like that. The tune is also the only tune on the CD that features a Plant writing credit (along with Jimmy Page and several other folks).

"Trampled Rose" - ah, this hauntingly beautiful Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan song features an ethereal Krauss vocal and some delicate Waits-ian coloration (though without the ever-present trash can symphony sonic color of Waits’ own work) which makes it sound oddly like a hi-fidelity version of a Zep outtake from III. Some hand drum stuff and National Steel guitar work with some ether haze floating through the mix. Don't hear Plant on this but the swooping vocal swells by Krauss could very well be Plant inspired.

"Fortune Teller" -- the classic early rock of New Orleans (the Stones also covered this early on) written by one "Naomi Neville" which was a pseudonym for either Art Neville or Allen Toussaint depending on who you believe. This is a rockin’ little ditty with Plant in quiet rocker mode.

“Stick With Me baby” -- by 60s Nashville star Mel Tillis finds the production etching more of a 50s street R&B vibe. Music for the front stoop, albeit dusky and shadowy where the melody’s softness pierces through the smoky haze.

“Nothin’” -- A dirge-like, grungy take on a Townes Van Zandt tune full of big guitar layered with subtle and scratchy fiddle riffs. Like a murky tale told under a dirty blanket. The sound of this track is wonderfully crafted mixing banjo, tambourine, Krauss’s wonderfully filthy fiddle and the other-side-of dawn Van Zandt ethos into a non-rocking rocker. Loud and ominously spooky.

“Let Your Loss be Your Lesson” - written by Mike Campbell, I presume the same guy as in Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers. Starts with a 60s Stax/Motown-esque riff and then sliding into a bouncing, rockabilly shuffle this features a tasty Krauss vocal that at times feels a bit little like she’s channeling Dolly Parton with that great little warble in her voice. The nice little edge on the guitar in the refrain is very Buffalo Springfield 60s and the solo kicks the tune out. One of the CD highlights with a compelling Krauss vocal. Not a country girl on this one.

“Your Long Journey” - begins with an autoharp figure from the folk pedigree of Mike Seeger and is the purest old-time song on the album with banjo, light drums, acoustic bass and Blake’s tasteful acoustic guitar. Sweet gospel tying Krauss’s roots to the album full tilt. Dig Plant’s dipping vocal. A man who long ago did his homework on this music. If you heard this on the radio you’d NEVER guess it was Robert Plant. Not in a million years.

Here’s a CD I will listen to for years. Can’t say that very often any more. Funny, while listening early on I felt it was a heavily Kraussian record, later I felt the Plant presence more. In retrospect, it hangs together perfectly. Burnett has been criticized for getting complacent with his productions in the last few years. His early work with his wife Sam Phillips was jarringly original as were his own albums. His work with Los Lobos sounding nothing like the BoDeans records he worked on. I don’t feel that critique has any validity here. This is a wonderfully solid and inspired collaboration between producer, artists and band that is one of the most listenable records to my ears in a long time.

So again, here’s another CD by a 60s iconic musical fave of mine and I will say wholeheartedly that unless you HATE country roots music of any kind (and this is by no means a country CD but her voice and one or two of the songs distinctly sit on that porch) I can recommend this record to everyone. Even my Dad would like this record and to get him to listen to any Led Zeppelin would be harder than me mastering Chinese algebra (is there such a thing?).