Robert & Alison-Raising Sand

Sorry Jaybo, hate to disagree - No comparison to the Harris/Knopfler effort. on All The Roadrunning which is phenomenal.

If you are hoping for shades of Zeppelin fuhgeddaboutit

It's not that its bad or poorly done, but most folks can safely skip this one

This one's a little deceptive - at first it sounds like straight up easy listening, but there's a lot of intersting, if subdued, rythmic stuff going on. I was just listening to the 7th track and heard references to early Brian Eno and Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb". Don't know that I'll ever love this record, but I'll certainly give it a bit more time.

Marty

At least Zep are sort of back together again, but in the Rolling Stone article I'm gnashin' my teeth because there was no mention or suggestion of them writing original music together again; have these guys nothing left in them? And I was hoping that even though Jason is 41, he could inject a bit of "new Zep" into the fold so that they might, just might, continue where they left off so many years ago. And yes let him be their drummer and if takes on a new sound, so be it, I'm all ears. And heck yeah, let Alison sing along with Zep too if it helps, I'm sure she can rock when the mood suits, after all, it ain't rocket science, but simply well-dated, hydrogen dirigible stuff, after all, guitars, bass, keyboards and drums weren't invented yesterday.

Plant's recent solo career suggests he has plenty left in him but maybe he just wants to get away from expectations like Stevechams.................

Interesting string on this recording. I just picked this up and absolutely love it.

I had no real expectations for this disk and actually first listened to a copy on the crappy headphone set up at Boarders out of pure curiosity. Even under those conditions, I could tell that the material had been selected and recorded with care. When I looked at the case and it said "produced by T Bone Burnett", I thought, "Well Duh".

I find the mix of vocals when Krauss and Plant sing together really unique and surprisingly wonderful. I have to agree with Sfar above that the stylistic signature of this album - if there is one - belongs to Burnett and Ribot first, with Krauss second, and Plant third. Strangely though, I think Plant owns the actual performances. When he is singing I can't help but focus on his voice which comes off as subtle and richly textured. The earthy and bluesy flavor of the material serves all the artists well.

I can't speak for the vinyl release, but I find the CD version of this recording to be very good, easily in the top 15-20% in my collection in terms of sound quality. Not being up to the level of the live Union Station LP is a pretty high bar that not many recordings attain. So is the "Raising Sand" LP really poorly produced, or just not totally fantastic? As far as I can tell, Burnett is a production fanatic, and I think it shows on the redbook version of this recording with lots of depth, multiple layers of sound with timing and space there in spades. Perhaps not the blackest blacks between cuts though...

I love Zepplin, but I can see why hard core Plant fans might be disappointed with this record. If you know anything about Burnett or Krauss, I don't think this loping country and blues tinged album would be surprising except for how the end result hangs together and turned out much better than than most people would have thought. For some reason it reminds me of JJ Cale's debut recording "Naturally", and that's saying quite a lot.