Album Review - Robert Plant & Allison Krauss, Raising Sand

YYYYY Excellent

2007 was a great year for Gene Clark. Who is Gene Clark you ask. He was one of the main song writers for the Byrds, and covers of his songs show up on two of 2007’s best albums. Chris and Rich Robinson cover “Polly” on their acoustic Brothers of a Feather album, and “Polly Come Home" and "Through the Morning, Through the Night" show up on what is probably the best record of 2007, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss amazing album Raising Sand. Allison Krauss’s sweet angelic voice has certainly been a fixture in most of our CD players since the O Brother soundtrack, and we all know Robert Plant’s growl, but who would have thought such a pair would work so well together. The album is made up entirely of some of the best cover tunes that you have never heard, songs penned by Townes van Zandt, Sam Phillips, Rowland Salley, the Everly Brothers, Tom Waits, Allen Toussaint, Mel Tillis, A.D. Watson, Milt Campbell and the beautifully subtle Please Read the Letter That I Wrote credited to Michael Lee, Charlie Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. Masterfully produced by T-Bone Burnett, each song is uniquely theirs; there is nothing forced or unnatural. The way he works to weave their voices together can only be described as flawless. Plant and Krauss fit together so well on this record that you just might think its Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. The best example is the album closer, Your Long Journey, a song that could easily have wound up on the soundtrack for Cold Mountain. The surprises here don’t come from Krauss; you’ll hear no Immigrant Song yowling from Plant on this record. If you’re looking for Zeppelin, the closest you may find is on the Townes van Zandt tune, Nothin’, where guitars and violins raise and swell and recede again exposing Plant’s subdued mournful voice. In fact on listening, for Plant's songs you tend to be reminded of the songs in Zeppelin’s catalogue that are…well, acoustic (yes they do exist!).