Robert Plant, Alison Krauss – Raise The Roof (2xLP, Warner UK)

Old folk songs, new rock tunes

Back in 2007, 14 years ago, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant recorded an album together, "Raising Sand." The cover album reached number two in Great Britain and the USA and was awarded Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards in 2009.

In 2021, the British rock singer and Led Zeppelin frontman and the American bluegrass country icon are following up that record. "Raise The Roof" is the name of their second duo album.

And again, Krauss and Plant have taken some songs by other, very different artists as their template. In a press release announcing the album, Krauss said that when she heard "Quattro (World Drifts In)" by Calexico, "I knew immediately we were going to make another album." The song serves as the opening track for "Raise The Roof."

The rest of the originals, old folk songs and new rock tunes, come from Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint, the Everly Brothers, Anne Briggs, Geeshie Wiley, Bert Jansch and others "You hear something and you're like, 'Man, listen to this song, we gotta sing this,'" Plant says of the duo's selection process. "It's really like a vacation - like the perfect place you least expect."

The two singers enlisted the help of several colleagues in the studio, including drummer Jay Bellerose, guitarists Marc Ribot, David Hidalgo, Bill Frisell and Buddy Miller, bassists Dennis Crouch and Viktor Krass, and pedal steel guitarist Russ Pahl. As with its predecessor, T Bone Burnett handled production on the album. Together with Plant he was also responsible for the only new composition on "Raise The Roof": the song "High and Lonesome".

The duo already delivered a first taste of the record with the song "Can't Let Go". Written by Randy Weeks, the song was first recorded by Lucinda Williams in 1998. Krauss and Plant have created their very own version of this modern classic