Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – Raising Sand – Double Vinyl Record

Description

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – Raising Sand – Double Vinyl Record

Raising Sand creates a shared musical world for two voices with very different histories. Robert Plant brings the grain and rhythmic flexibility of a singer steeped in blues and rock, while Alison Krauss contributes the clear tone and precise harmony singing associated with her bluegrass and country work. Released in 2007 and produced by T Bone Burnett, their first collaborative album finds common ground in songs that move between folk, country, early rock and R&B. The arrangements are spacious and often shadowy, leaving the singers room to blend without disguising what makes each voice distinctive. Their partnership feels most compelling in the small adjustments they make to one another’s phrasing. Their differences become an expressive part of the harmony.

Burnett’s selection of material gives the album a strong identity. “Rich Woman” begins with an insistent pulse and a sense of restrained momentum, while “Killing the Blues,” written by Rowland Salley, allows the harmonies to settle into a more reflective setting. Sam Phillips’ “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” adds another shade of atmosphere, demonstrating how comfortably Krauss can inhabit a song that sits outside a straightforward bluegrass arrangement. The production does not force all of the material into one genre. Instead, it creates a consistent space around the performers, using texture, rhythm and the placement of the voices to connect songs with very different origins.

Gene Clark’s writing appears twice, through “Polly Come Home” and “Through the Morning, Through the Night.” Those selections bring a particularly strong sense of longing into the program and suit the duo’s ability to make a melody sound both familiar and slightly unsettled. The Everly Brothers connection in “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)” points toward another tradition of close harmony, but Plant and Krauss give the song their own weight and rhythmic character. These choices make Raising Sand more than a collection of well-known covers. Part of its pleasure is encountering a song through the combination of these singers and then hearing new possibilities in its shape, mood or underlying emotional tension.

“Please Read the Letter,” previously recorded by Jimmy Page and Plant, is transformed by the partnership and became one of the album’s defining performances. Elsewhere, “Trampled Rose” draws from Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, “Fortune Teller” reaches into the New Orleans songbook, and Townes Van Zandt’s “Nothin’” brings a stark, inward-looking presence. “Stick with Me Baby” and “Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson” add further changes of pace before “Your Long Journey” closes the album. Throughout the set, the singers avoid making every song a contest of vocal power. Their restraint is expressive in itself, allowing a slight roughness, a held note or the distance between two harmonies to carry the feeling.

This Rounder double-vinyl edition presents all thirteen tracks from Raising Sand. The album went on to win the Grammy for Album of the Year, with “Please Read the Letter” receiving Record of the Year, recognition that reflected how widely this unusual collaboration connected. Its appeal remains rooted in the performances rather than the awards: two accomplished singers discovering what their voices can do together in a carefully chosen body of songs. For listeners drawn to Krauss’ harmonies, Plant’s roots-oriented work or Burnett’s atmospheric productions, the record offers a substantial meeting of those interests. The songs retain their individual histories while becoming part of a coherent, quietly absorbing album.

Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic

Track Listing

Side A
Rich Woman
Killing The Blues
Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us
Polly Come Home

Side B
Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)
Through The Morning, Through The Night
Please Read The Letter

Side C
Trampled Rose
Fortune Teller
Stick With Me Baby

Side D
Nothin'
Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson
Your Long Journey