Is that a dude in a Robert Plant mask?
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss'
Raising Sand is a perfectly fine, tasteful, modest little record; that it won the Grammy for Best Album last night is not surprising in the least, and even though I'd like to say that if it weren't for Plant's name on the plastic, it wouldn't have sniffed a Grammy, I'm not even sure that'd be true. Well, sure, Grammys go to names or sales (and Plant sold a million copies), but musically
Raising Sand radiates a folkified West Coast pleasantness that signifies as middlebrow class. It isn't hard to imagine an academy of aging voters (a lot of these people were in the record business when Led Zepp were around) listening to the bombast of Coldplay, the willful obscurantism of Radiohead, the profane verbal gymnastics of Lil Wayne, and the detached loverman-ness of Ne-Yo, and settling on a well-executed minor-key bluegrass record for which they are the
raison d'être. Still, even if you're miffed that Lil Wayne didn't walk off with the hardware after producing the consensus media event record of 2008, you can't be too mad at Robert Plant.
Raising Sand is no
Two Against Nature or
Genius Loves Company; it's a record with a quiet vitality that suggests a path forward for its principals rather than a gaudy headstone for Led Zeppelin. Just listen to "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)" and if it doesn't move you a little bit, well, there's a reason I don't do money-back guarantees.
Is that a dude in a Robert Plant mask?
