Raise The Roof

Robert Plant, Alison Krauss

Released on 11/19/21 by Rounder
Main artists: Robert Plant Alison Krauss
Genre: Country

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In retrospect, the idea of a musical partnership between the buttoned-down queen of bluegrass and the tousled former frontman of Led Zeppelin is so unique and imaginative that it was almost predestined to work. After initially meeting in 2004 during a Lead Belly tribute, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, shepherded by producer T-Bone Burnett, first recorded together on Raising Sand three years later. Filled with covers of Gene Clark, Allen Toussaint, and the Everly Brothers among others, the evocative, out-of-left-field collection won Album of the Year and five other Grammy Awards and hit #1 on the Rock Album charts. Despite an attempt in 2009 at a second album, the timing for a follow-up was never right until now. Though anxious about their ability to reawaken the artistic symbiosis they found on Raising Sand, the pair reconvened in 2019 in the same Nashville studio with the same rhythm section of bassist Dennis Crouch and drummer Jay Bellerose, and Burnett back in the producer's chair. Much like their previous effort, Raise The Roof is a swirl of shifting moods and atmospheric vocal soundscapes, this time with a deeper, darker emotional tenor. The album's fears and desires can be deciphered just by reading the titles: "Last Kind Words Blues," "You Led Me To The Wrong," and "Going Where The Lonely Go." Both singers had a hand in choosing the deep Americana cuts for this project with Plant adding an old R&B favorite, "Searching for My Love" (originally by Bobby Moore & The Rhythm Aces), where he sings lead while Krauss rhythmically repeats "searching, searching for my baby" in the background. Krauss takes the lead in a slow turn through one of her choices, Merle Haggard's "Going Where The Lonely Go," as Plant lays back and sings harmonies in the choruses. She gets positively mystic in a smoky, reverb-drenched version of The Everly Brothers', "The Price of Love" and on a similarly stark and rhythmic arrangement of Allen Toussaint's "Trouble With My Lover," which creeps along with Krauss singing lead and the pair duetting on the choruses. An upbeat take of Randy Weeks' "Can't Let Go"—made famous by Lucinda Williams—benefits from Bill Frisell's funky guitar work. Williams herself appears as a background vocalist on the album's mini-symphony finale, a rhythmic, almost chanted cover of "Somebody Was Watching Over Me," with Los Lobos' David Hidalgo on brilliant growling electric-acoustic guitar. The musicianship throughout is stellar with an incomparable group of electric guitar texturalists including Frisell, Hidalgo, Marc Ribot, and Buddy Miller adding their individual voices. A number of exotic instruments also appear in the mix including the marxophone (a fretless zither), the dolceola (a zither with a keyboard that can be heard on recordings by Lead Belly and the Arctic Monkeys), and requinto (a smaller, higher-pitched guitar). While the element of surprise that made Raising Sand such a revelation is gone and Krauss's angelic voice still stands out as it always will, the entwining vocals are again this pair's greatest strength. Comparing the vocal mix between the two to raindrops, Burnett recently said that when they sing together, a third harmony magically emerges and "creates a fine mist." Another immersive, if duskier, melding of vocal stylists. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

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Raise The Roof

Robert Plant

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