Raise the Roof is the second collaborative studio album by British singer-songwriter Robert Plant and American bluegrass-country singer Alison Krauss. The album is scheduled to be released on November 19, 2021, by Rounder Records and Concord Records. In 2007, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss released Raising Sand, one of the most acclaimed albums of the 21st Century, which reached #2 on the UK album chart, generated multi-platinum sales, and earned six Grammy Awards including Album and Record of the Year. It was an unlikely, mesmerizing pairing of one of rock's greatest frontmen with one of country music's finest and most honored artists. Now, after 14 years, they return with Raise the Roof, 12 songs from a range of traditions and styles that extend this remarkable collaboration in new and thrilling directions.
What seems to be an unlikely pairing of former Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant and bluegrass superstar Alison Krauss is actually one of the most effortless-sounding duos in modern popular music. The bridge seems to be producer T-Bone Burnett and the band assembled for this outing: drummer Jay Bellerose (who seems to be the session drummer in demand these days), upright bassist Dennis Crouch, guitarists Marc Ribot and Burnett, with Greg Leisz playing steel here and there, and a number of other guest appearances. Krauss, a monster fiddle player, only does so on two songs here. The proceedings are, predictably, very laid-back. Burnett has only known one speed these last ten years, and so the material chosen by the three is mostly very subdued…
What seems to be an unlikely pairing of former Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant and bluegrass superstar Alison Krauss is actually one of the most effortless-sounding duos in modern popular music. The bridge seems to be producer T-Bone Burnett and the band assembled for this outing: drummer Jay Bellerose (who seems to be the session drummer in demand these days), upright bassist Dennis Crouch, guitarists Marc Ribot and Burnett, with Greg Leisz playing steel here and there, and a number of other guest appearances. Krauss, a monster fiddle player, only does so on two songs here. The proceedings are, predictably, very laid-back. Burnett has only known one speed these last ten years, and so the material chosen by the three is mostly very subdued…
In 2007, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss released Raising Sand, one of the most acclaimed albums of the 21st Century. It was an unlikely, mesmerizing pairing of one of rock’s greatest frontmen with one of country music’s finest and most honored artists, produced by the legendary T Bone Burnett. Now, after 14 years, they return with Raise the Roof, a dozen songs from a range of traditions and styles that extend this remarkable collaboration in new and thrilling directions.
Sixty Six to Timbuktu has to be the icing on the cake for Robert Plant. After Led Zeppelin issued its second live album as well as a spectacular DVD in 2003, his career retrospective outside of the band is the new archetype for how they should be compiled. Containing two discs and 35 cuts, the set is divided with distinction. Disc one contains 16 tracks that cover Plant's post-Zep recording career via cuts from his eight solo albums. Along with the obvious weight of his former band's presence on cuts like "Tall Cool One," "Promised Land," and "Tie Dye on the Highway," there is also the flowering of the influence that Moroccan music in particular and Eastern music in general would have on him in readings of Tim Hardin's "If I Were a Carpenter," Jesse Colin Young's "Darkness, Darkness," and his own "29 Palms." There is also a healthy interest in technology being opened up on cuts from Pictures at Eleven and Now & Zen…
On Mighty Rearranger, the core of the band Robert Plant showcased on 2002's Dreamland - and named the Strange Sensation - is a full-blown expanded lineup that shares the bill with him. Guitarists Justin Adams and Skin Tyson, drummer Clive Deamer, keyboardist John Baggot, and bassist Billy Fuller help Plant give listeners his most musically satisfying and diverse recording since, well, Led Zeppelin's Physical Grafitti. The reference is not a mere platitude to Plant's pedigree. The songs, production, and sequencing of the album overtly incorporates those sounds as well as those of Eastern modalism, Malian folk, guitar rock, R&B, and others, for inspiration - and why shouldn't they? Mighty Rearranger opens with "Another Tribe," a sociopolitical ballad that touches upon the textural string backdrops from Zep's "Kashmir" and is fueled by Moroccan bendir drums…