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Plant And Krauss Make Beautiful Music Together

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By CURTIS ROSS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 8, 2007

Updated: 11/07/2007 03:33 pm

The pairing of Led Zeppelin's flamboyant ex-frontman with bluegrass' longtime darling might seem like a particularly lame "Saturday Night Live" sketch: "Then we'll have Marilyn Manson sing with Luciano Pavarotti! Crazy!"

But Alison Krauss makes no secret of her love for hard rock, and Robert Plant has traveled far and wide musically since Zeppelin's demise. After covering Africa and Asia, it likely was only a matter of time before Plant made it to the Southeastern United States, musically speaking.

So if that union still looks unlikely on paper, listen to the way their voices join as one on the best parts of "Raising Sand" and let no man put asunder.

The results, at times, are almost too beautiful to be human. Their voices meld so perfectly on Mel Tillis' "Stick With Me Baby" that calling it harmony doesn't do it justice - the two voices genuinely become one.

It's the slow, sad country(ish) songs that provide the most goose-bumps here - "Killing the Blues," "Polly Come Home," "Please Read the Letter" and the aforementioned "Stick With Me Baby" should be finalists for anyone's best-of-2007 playlist.

Livelier numbers such as "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)" and "Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson" serve as wake-up calls in between the dreamy stuff.

The song selection and vocal performances are first-rate. T-Bone Burnett's production, however, is stifling. Burnett enforces tastefulness the way the KGB enforced party loyalty. His one concession must have been letting Plant's long, rolling "well" toward the end of "Gone" stay in the final mix.

Burnett's preferred sound is the equivalent of seeing a sepia-tone print on a high-definition screen, a faux vintage that hermetically seals the music from anything crass - like life.

Still, the performances by Plant and Krauss are stunning and the good stuff makes the more barren byways worth the trouble.

Download this: "Killing the Blues"

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