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| Raising Sand | 
 enlarge | Creators: Robert Plant And Alison Krauss, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss
Label: Rounder
Category: Music
List Price: $18.98
Buy New: $10.46
You Save: $8.52 (45%)
New (46) Used (21) Collectible (2) from $8.96
Avg. Customer Rating:  501 reviews
Sales Rank: 70
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.5 x 4.8 x 0.4
MPN: 619075
UPC: 011661907522
EAN: 0011661907522
ASIN: B000UMQDHC
Release Date: October 23, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Lackluster and aimless, poor sound engineering November 5, 2007
37 out of 61 found this review helpful
I love them both. But this collaboration is an example of why 10 brilliantly talented musicians in a room, without a coherent vision for the album, doth not a good album make.
The band is basically a jug band. They play with a loose "boys from the hills" flavor." They play great, but the songs simply don't go together. You've got hints of bluegrass, hints of Led Zeppelin, hints of Tommy James and The Shondells, Buddy Holly, ... in fact, there are hints of a lot of influences in there.
But this makes the collection come off sounding too much like a random bunch of nothing.
The recording quality is the pits. The bass and the kick drum are way too heavy in the mix, to the point that they cloud up everything. Krauss (on all the other albums I have of hers) is usually close-miked with a beautiful Neumann capsule unit that gives her the beautiful sound of expensive crystal and fresh air. Here, she is simply reduced to midrange mud.
Robert Plant sounds like his heart really isn't in ANY of these songs. He sounds like he's "happily going along because he's got nothing better to do" when he harmonizes. When he is the lead, he sounds like he'd rather be singing something else. Great voice, expert mechanical skill, but no soul.
Krauss's previous effort included one duet with John Waite (a remake of his "Missing You"). That song was radically different from everything else on that album, but it was only one song. It's okay to have an "out there" track in the mix, and it was beautifully done. But this album is just one random redirection after another. And none of them are very good songs. One wonders where they even came up with
this lackluster set list.
If you were waiting for an explosion from the fusion of the great Led Zeppelin singer and the greatest female vocalist on the planet, you'll be disappointed.
It's amazing. They sing great. The band plays great. The album stinks.
You get what you put into it October 26, 2007
23 out of 56 found this review helpful
And in the case of the marvelously talented vocalists Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, both the effort and the result is "NOT MUCH."
Have you ever noticed how tight a band sounds after they've been on the road for a few months, polishing their performance and getting live crowd feedback? Well, as the promo video for this album made clear, Plant and Krauss both set aside a few days in their busy schedules to knock off this album, before parting ways again. The music was chosen by someone else (T-Bone Burnett), and they may have had a chance to rehearse it a couple of times before laying down the tracks in the studio (probably separately, I suspect). Despite the superb credentials of the backing musicians, the fact that this is not and never will be a unified group is all too evident.
Everything about "Raising Sand" screams "artificial." It's a lightweight confection, concocted in the studio. But fancy engineering can't disguise the fact that neither Krauss nor Plant were really into the music, or even that familiar with it. Their expertise allowed them to fake their way through passably, but the absence of passion and live performance experience with it cannot be disguised.
Take a pass on "Raising Sand." Albums like this are the reason why CD sales are crumbling. Somebody is exploiting us here to raise some quick bucks by trading on famous names.
 tasteful to a fault October 24, 2007
22 out of 29 found this review helpful
If the old timers in Appalachia had been raised on NPR and Starbucks this is what their music would probably have sounded like. The musicianship here is impeccable. The production is meticulous. There is not one note that's offensive or in bad taste. There is also very little life to the performances.
I have been an Alison Krauss fan for years and I buy all her cds even though it's been a while since I've actually found any of them to be very interesting. If you go back to some of her earlier recordings, before "When you say nothing at all," there was actually a little grit in her singing voice. Listen to "It's Over" and you'll hear what I mean. At some point, however, she started to sing in a soft, whispery voice that sounds like she's channeling Jackie Kennedy. It's beautiful, but after a while everything begins to sound the same and she sounds less and less like a real human being.
This cd is not bad and it will make excellent background music, but these people are way to talented to be settling for that.
So Sorry November 1, 2007
22 out of 43 found this review helpful
I'm a die-hard Alison fan. Indeed, i literally worship everything she and Union Station have done since day one. Really, I have loved her since back in the day of Hee Haw and the Cox Family and going forward. I love her so much. Plus, I grew up in the rock and roll of Led Zep. What an anticipation of this pairing! My gosh, the best of bluegrass and the best of rock. Never have I pre-ordered a CD until now with such anticipation of an amazing amalgam.
But, I'm so sorry to say that this tanks. There's no bluegrass. There's no rock & roll. They sort of stab at a little country sound but what we have here are a few hacknyed rockabilly tunes which, frankly, sound like they belong in an old Elvis movie score. I kept thinking "Girl Happy". Not that there's anything wrong with that but gee whiz, the King did that 40 years ago and better. The other tunes are Russian gypsy strumming stuff that frankly puts me to sleepers.
I wish they had kicked it up a notch or 100. God bless you both for trying (and the harmonies hold such promise!) but I think you need to stick to your genres.
one star for pure perversity January 18, 2008
22 out of 37 found this review helpful
OK, 338 reviews are up, most are positive. So, this review is destined for "ZERO out of 10 people found this review helpful', I know this ... but man, this is a horrid recording. I call it perverse because there is a purposed slowness and tepidness to most of the tracks. There's nothing wrong with purposed slowness, but in this case, the result is a dark cloud cover of blah.... Nothing about this project expresses or explores anything interesting ... almost every track is an experiment in slow boringness. This CD will fall by the wayside - in 5 years nobody will speak well of this project. The 'vibe' of these tracks is unpleasant. I am guilty of (or the proud author of) mostly subjective reviews, how the recording FEELS to me is usually what I want to tell you. Wow, this one felt so awful I got rid of this CD QUICK. And I do love Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant, and Allison Krause. Somebody (PRODUCER) got carried away with some GREAT IDEA and forgot to LISTEN to this garbage.
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