Muruch

Congratulations to Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova on winning the Oscar for Best Original Song! For the few who hadn’t heard “Falling Slowly” before the award show performance, the ballad is on the brilliant Once soundtrack. It was #4 on my Top Albums of 2007 list. I thought the Hansard/Irglova/Stewart interaction last night was adorable.

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I occasionally get asked about songs played in tv shows or commercials. Most of these questions pertain to Kate Voegele’s role as Mia on One Tree Hill. If you’re curious about the song playing in the final scene of this week’s episode of OTH, it was “Ashes And Wine” from A Fine Frenzy’s One Cell In The Sea.

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The new JC Penney American Living commercial features “Killing The Blues” from Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – #7 on my Top of ‘07 list.

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And the song in the animated CVS Pharmacy commercial is a cover of Sarah Mclachlan’s “Ordinary Miracle” performed by Kathy Fisher of the band Fisher, an old online acquaintance of mine. Fisher’s “I Will Love You” (which she was kind enough to dedicate to my hubby & me at Mountain Stage in 2001) was the first mp3 I ever downloaded. It’s on her debut album One.

Raising Sand is a collaboration between former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and bluegrass darling Alison Krauss. This impressive collection is unusual – both because of the pair’s seeming contradictory musical traditions and also in the strange and lovely amalgam of their styles. With the help of producer T Bone Burnett, the two put together some very interesting arrangements in this eclectic selection of songs.

“Rich Woman” opens the album with an airy mix of light blues and psychedelica that unfortunately outshines the duo’s dueling falsetto vocals. The reverse is true in “Killing The Blues”, which better suits the vocal pairing but has a lackluster arrangement. Still, it’s a very pretty tune that does have a nice twist of lapsteel. I just prefer Shawn Colvin’s version.

It’s the cover of Sam Phillips’ “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” – inspired by Sister Rosetta Tharpe – that really seems to get the album flowing. Alison purrs sweetly over a swaying melody that successfully combines the bluegrass instrumentation of her own music with the exotic percussion and strings of Plant’s recent recordings.

Their rocky rendition of The Everly Brothers’ “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)” is another highlight, thanks in part to producer T Bone Burnett’s 6-string bass. The tune also features the best vocal interplay on the disc, with Plant finally unleashing his voice a bit as Krauss provides harmony.

The pedal steeled “Through The Morning, Through The Night” could’ve been lifted from one of Alison’s own albums, with her gentle voice taking the spotlight. This is perhaps fitting because the track that follows, “Please Read The Letter”, was taken from Plant’s 1998 collaboration with former bandmate Jimmy Page. The Plant/Page cover is another grand vocal mesh, showing off the beauty of both singers’ voices before Plant indulges in some Zep wailing toward the end of the song. Krauss gets to do a little belting of her own on the country-rocker “Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson”.

The stand out track is the gorgeous cover of the Tom Waits tune “Trampled Rose”, with Krauss delivering a stellar lead vocal over a haunting blend of Dobro, percussion, toy piano, and pump organ. Plant then takes the reins again on “Fortune Teller” – which has a sort of cosmic surf rock mood – and the thrillingly atmospheric cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Nothin’”.

Robert Plant Official Site
Alison Krauss Official Site

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Ann Wilson is probably best known as the wailing brunette half of the pop-rock band Heart. The September 11th release Hope & Glory is Ann’s first solo album, though she only sings alone on three tracks. The rest of the disc is a collection of duets. Among the guest singers are Ann’s sister Nancy Wilson (the blonde guitarist half of Heart and wife of director Cameron Crowe), Elton John, K.D. Lang, Wynonna, Gretchen Wilson, Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin, and Rufus Wainwright. Eleven of the twelve tracks are covers, with one original for the finale. Wilson tackles classics by Dylan, Lennon, Young, and Zeppelin as well as a modern classic by Lucinda Williams.

Hope & Glory is both better than I expect and somewhat of a disappointment. I feared that Ann may follow Linda Rhonstadt and Suzy Bogguss into softer territory rather than using the full potential of her voice, which I believe is one of the strongest female voices of the past four decades. But while Ann never fully unleashes those pipes, she does keep enough fire and depth in her singing to avoid mellow mediocrity.

The arrangements are also quite nice, often mixing pop and rock in a similar fashion to Heart with the addition of strings, steel, piano, and occasionally banjo for more melodic flow. I was pleasantly surprised by the slightly pumped up yet still very rustic take on Lucinda Williams’ “Jackson”.

Ann really shines during the few times that she has the spotlight to herself or when she shares it with her sister, particularly on the ominous “Goodbye Blue Sky”, her astounding cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”, and on the original track “Little Problems, Little Lies”.

Unfortunately, that powerhouse voice often seems confined in order not to outshine the weaker guest vocalists. Only Wynonna, who appears on the howling “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place”, seems capable of matching Ann’s range enough to allow her to really belt it out.

In the same way that Patti Smith recently used the songs of others to express her feelings on the state of the world today, the songs that Ann chose to cover on Hope & Glory share a theme of despair over war and hope for peace. I do hope that Ann will record a true solo album in the future, one that will grant her voice the freedom to soar to its full height. But there’s definitely more to enjoy than complain about in this initial step.

Ann Wilson MySpace

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