I just realized I had never blogged about the best album I’ve heard in a while, Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. It’s just wonderful.

I’ve been a fan of T Bone Burnett’s production for ages, and this is his best yet, IMHO. Take for example the Tom Waits song “Trampled Rose,” which under T Bone’s direction becomes a dark, brooding Appalachian number, with percussion which sounds like some kind of black, sticky goo from the underside of the Universe. I know, I know, that’s over the top, but you’ve never heard anything quite like this. And then there’s the choice of songs: two gems from former Byrd (and Kansas native) Gene Clark, a Sam Phillips song, a reworked Page & Plant song (“Please Read the Letter,” one of my favorites), an Everly Brothers tune—it’s all top-notch stuff. And of course the singing is amazing….

There’s a very good interview from NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday which includes three complete songs from the album as well as links to some of Alison Krauss’ previous material. Why they didn’t include some of Plant’s stuff (like, say, The Mighty Rearranger), I don’t know.

Hold the phone! At the bottom of the NPR page is a link to a story I’ve been telling people about for three years: a Renee Montagne interview with Robert Plant about the Festival in the Desert, an African concert in which he played blues with Tuareg musicians. It illustrates his thesis about the music of Mali and Niger as the ultimate source of the blues, via slaves from that area transported to the southern United States. All I know is that the little snippet they played in the interview had a primeval sound that sent shivers down my spine.