Paradise regained
Bluegrass at its most refined yet existential‚ as old firm stick and twist for seventh studio outing.
By Mark Cooper.
Alison Krauss & Union Station
★★★★
Arcadia
DOWN THE ROAD. CD/DL/LP
WHILE SHE’S been busy with her solo career and her opposites-attract collaboration with Robert Plant, Krauss hasn’t made an album with her colleagues Union Station in 14 years. Yet despite the arrival of IIIrd Tyme Out’s Russell Moore as Alison’s new lead vocal foil, there’s much that’s reassuringly familiar about Arcadia. As ever, the sonic palette is richly clean, the harmonies stacked, and Jerry Douglas’s dobro an empathetic, keening presence in constant dialogue with the singers, now the dominant solo instrument in the ensemble. Krauss and the band have been ploughing this furrow since their Two Highways debut back in 1989, operating intermittently alongside Krauss’s largely more mainstream solo career and weathering together the early 2000s when O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Cold Mountain briefly turned bluegrass into a pop phenomenon.