Of course, Robert Plant cannot do without a mystical moment. Has always been like that with the singer. With his old band, with his solo stuff. In appearance. In appearance. In the texts. In this powerful, reptilian-horny voice that an entire generation has tried to imitate. Oh what, generation. Anyone, actually, who has ever sung what was once called hard rock – it doesn’t matter whether it was later called heavy metal, hardcore, glam rock or emo. Everything is planned.
All this border-breaking (and sometimes borderline dubious) rock’n’roll-nucleus-mystique mixture – British, Marshall amplifier-booming blues, a drum thump for which the appropriately large football stadiums still had to be built, copulation poetry in the square . After all, from 1968 the Brit played for about twelve years in the best formation of an era in which the guitars finally got really loud – and with great hair and very tight pants, extremely important. Plant was the blueprint. The front man of a band that shaped a decade, which in its timelessness it was always decades ahead of. Always the greatest gesture. Still greater eros. A little Celtic fairy dust over it: done. “All that glitters is gold”.
Led Zeppelin, the older people will remember, the band was called. Plus / minus 300 million albums sold. Mysticism and myth were still very close together, back then.
Blues, folk, country – highly dangerous soundscapes, an insane floating harmony in the chants
And this same former Led Zeppelin front man, he says on the phone, was now driving down a country road one evening – “It was probably 16 or 17 years ago, and I heard the highly rated Bob Harris radio show”. He really says it like this: esteemed. It was “pitch dark”, he also says, which can only mean that it was at least as dark as it is usually only in fairy tales, and of course the listener’s brain adds thick fog and one during the story single, crashing lightning bolt. Then absolute silence again, and in the distance a wolf howls.
Anyway: Suddenly the former front man of Led Zeppelin heard this (his words): “heavenly voice” and was so moved that he pulled the car to the side of the road, switched off the engine and for the first time with skin and hair (great hair !) musically fell to the woman with whom he would subsequently record a gigantic album: “Raising Sand”, released in 2006, blues, folk, country, rock – highly dangerous, hypnotic soundscapes, an insane floating harmony in the chants. And now a second one. That’s great too. It’s called “Raise The Roof”.
The woman’s name is Alison Krauss, which may not give the average continental European the honor it deserves. It’s much bigger in the US. Krauss was an at least medium-astonishing violin child prodigy who, when he was about eleven, turned to the genre in which the violin was played instead of classical music fiddle is called: bluegrass. Very heartland American. Still very demanding. She won her first Grammy when she was 19. No woman has won more awards since then – until Beyoncé got her 28th in 2021. Now Krauss is in fourth place with 27 awards. Quincy Jones (28) is ahead of her with Beyoncé. And the conductor Georg Solti (31). No one else. Not Aretha Franklin, not Ella Fitzgerald. No Adele, Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga. Madonna not anyway. But no Springsteen either, Kanye, Wonder. Krauss.
If you assume for the moment that prizes like the Grammys will at least also be given to outstanding artists, above all because of their voices. With this voice, pure from the spring water, unpretentious to the point of brutalism, suitable to proclaim God and all angels as well as close relatives. Truthfulness probably sounds like it. At least. “Heavenly Voice”: Plant already makes a point.
Krauss first consciously noticed Plant at MTV, she says now, in the same conference call between Nashville (Krauss) and an unspecified location in Great Britain (Plant). Zoom isn’t for either of them. You’re not that good with computers. Krauss’ first contact with the musical partner was also a while ago. The station called “Music Television” was still playing music back then – a crazy concept. And Krauss saw and heard Plant on television “as a solo artist, not with the things he did with his previous band”. She really says it like this: “his previous band”. As if Led Zeppelin were a kind of reef rock-turned Lord Voldemort – the band, that shall not be named. “I was really scared of the first few sessions,” she says.
An improbable mixture: the god of thunder of the oversized and the pillar saint of the authentic
And that really sums up how unlikely it was initially that this project could work. Artistically, in the attitude of those involved, aesthetically. Plant, the god of thunder of the oversized, the artificial, whose voice has whispered everything, but above all women, of course, at an artistic distance for decades. Krauss, the pillar saint of the real, the – attention, bad pop word: authentic.
It is really quite impossible for anything to come of it. Or very compelling, of course.
“The one big question that came before all other questions for me:” says Plant about the first album, “Would our voices work together?” Then he pauses for a moment, thinks about it or wants to give the well-rehearsed punchline the appropriate timing, giggles a little and then says: “Well, actually we had to find out how I wouldn’t ruin Alison’s infinitely beautiful voice with mine.” How you can see again that even understatement is precision work. Can slip easily from time to time.
Raise The Roof: the new album from Krauss and Plant.
(Photo: Warner Music / Warner Music)
As for the voices and the rest of the music: In fact, the whole thing on “Raise The Roof” is nothing less than a highly confusing blessing. A kind of musical anomaly, physically and metaphysically almost impossible to explain, but then the golden yellow honey stream of Krauss’ melodies in the first song, “Quattro” (mantra-like chord, downy keys, velvet bass), somehow also surrounds Plants with fantastically aged creak, and from then on the voices hardly let go of each other on this again darkly beautiful radiant country-blues-folk-rock journey. Sometimes Plant pushes himself under the arrangements and lifts everything, so that seems possible, a little closer to the sun. Sometimes they dive deep together into the whiskey barrels in which a few of the songs have matured. Cat-pawed interplay that creeps around each other. Very shy, tentative getting to know each other. Less the second time. But still noticeable.
By the way, T Bone Burnett is the magician who made this possible, according to the two unanimous reports. The producer once had the idea for the project, and like then, he is driving Krauss and Plant out of their comfort zone this time too. Into songs and styles that both have never played like that. Which does not mean that the result is new on any level. That’s not the case. At the same time it still sounds unheard. Another confusing mix. A strong term that Plant finds for it: “ancient brand new.” Does he also take part in a point.