Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – Raising Sand (Rounder)

Stunning. A neck-craning collaboration so unexpected that you’re immediately drawn to investigate. Then, almost as soon as you hear the two efficiently work their voices together, you realize that such a pairing is one of the reasons you’re so obsessive about music to begin with. Yes, this is soul enriching stuff, the type of album that you’d stay alive to hear again. And, coincidentally, the type of album that you need to make sure you don’t live another day without hearing.

Raising Sand is a ribbon microphone document of several genre-jumping passages (some are masterfully completed in a single song) delivered with incredible authenticity. The opener, “Rich Woman,” sounds straight out of the Louisiana bayou with a gritty little guitar solo secretly positioned only in the right channel and a pair of perfectly matched harmony vocals that don’t even begin to prepare you for stunners you’ve yet to hear.

If you’re not keeping track right now, we haven’t even reached the second song.

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