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Against the Grain


Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones grace the cover of Rolling Stone with their Led Zeppelin reunion, but Plant's real supergroup of 2007 teams him with the GRAMMY-winningest bluegrass diva. There have been lots of great albums in the second half of 2007, from Springsteen’s Magic to John Fogerty’s Revival, but the one stuck on my iPod has been Raising Sand (Rounder), from Plant and Alison Krauss. The CD came out too late to be considered for Album of the Year honors, but the single "Gone, Gone, Gone" made the GRAMMY deadline - and the list of nominees - for Best Pop Collaboration. Given Alison's winning streak, it's a sure winner.
Now, at first glance, Raising Sand is a little like those pro-wrestling matchups -  Heavy Metal God Vs. the Bluegrass Angel. But it’s not really such an odd coupling.

For one, Plant has always had a far more eclectic approach to music than the legions of hard-rockers following in his wake. With Led Zeppelin’s Mothership burning up iTunes, go deeper into the catalog and see how often they put folk in the mix, whether it’s Brit folk diva Sandy Denny on “The Battle of Evermore” or Jimmy Page plunking banjo on “Gallows Pole.” That tension between acoustic and electric got lost along the way in metal, but Plant has deep roots.

And Krauss, who has never sounded better, has always brought progressive sounds to bluegrass, covering Bad Company and the Beatles with equal grace. Combine her haunting O Brother harmonies with Plant’s loose-limbed rockabilly and jump-blues 1984 EP The Honeydrippers, and you’ve got a grain of what Raising Sand sounds like.

But it took O Brother producer T-Bone Burnett to meld them together with an unlikely A team of pickers combining bluegrass/old-timey master Norman Blake and multi-instrumental folklorist Mike Seeger with edgy, avant guitarist Marc Ribot.

Even so, Raising Sand is much more than the sum of its wonderfully disparate parts. The 13 songs mix R&B (the New Orleans classic “Fortune Teller”) with Everly Brothers country rock (“Gone Gone Gone”) and intriguing new songs like “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us.”

Best is saved for last. “Your Long Journey,” by Rosa Lee Watson (Doc’s wife), is an aching song of lost love tempered by faith. Opening with the celestial chimes of Seeger’s autoharp, Plant and Krauss closely harmonize, “God’s given us years of happiness here. Now we must part… My heart breaks as you take your long journey.” It’s a beautiful, powerfully understated finale.
If you don’t have Raising Sand yet, go get it. And as we enter serious gifting season, for a real surprise, give 2007’s most surprising album.