I picked up this album yesterday and have been listening to it in the car since buying it. This is one of the most beautiful albums I own. The melodies are perfect and the vocals are beautiful. I just love Alison Krauss’ voice, it’s so pretty and peaceful.
Most people are used to Robert Plant being from Led Zeppelin and having a screeching voice on rock/blues songs. And most people are used to Alison Krauss being bluegrass (and having a nice cameo on backup vocals for Phish‘s “If I could I would” from the album Hoist). This album is not rock, not blues, and not bluegrass. Produced by T Bone Burnett, the album is quite different. It seems to take some folk, throw in a little Celtic feel (on some of the songs), a little new age folk, with some primal beats and you end up with one of the best albums I have heard in a long time. I won’t go song by song (because being in the car, it’s difficult to do that and concentrate on driving), but as a whole this album is very cohesive, melodic, and just plain beautiful. It’s a great album to mellow out to in front of a fire. It was definitely worth the purchase price.
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – Raising Sand
Front the looks of their site, they might also be doing a tour to support the album. Their Tour page has Jan. 1, 2008 marked off with TBA. I’m curious to see what it ends up being.
Update: Upon listening to it a couple more times I noticed some traditional Greek and Italian sounds in there as well. The music on this album is absolutely beautiful. This is one well-made album. Perhaps we’ll see it win some awards.