Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have shared their new single “High and Lonesome” from the upcoming collaborative album Raise the Roof, the duo’s first album together in 14 years.
While Raise the Roof is predominately filled with Plant and Krauss’ covers of songs by Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint, the Everly Brothers, and Bert Jansch, “High and Lonesome” marks the LP’s lone original track, with Plant co-writing it alongside T-Bone Burnett, who also produced the album; Burnett was also producer on Plant and Krauss’ previous album, 2007’s Raising Sand.
The song features an all-star lineup including drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Dennis Crouch, guitarist Marc Ribot, and pedal steel player Russell Pahl, plus Viktor Krauss on mellotron, Jeff Taylor on bass accordion, and Burnett on electric guitar and mellotron.
“It’s such a far cry from everything I’ve done before,” Plant said of the album in a statement. “I love the whole kaleidoscope of music that I’ve explored, but this is a place where you can think within the song, you can decide how to bring home an emotion. It’s another blend that we’ve got, and long may we have more of them.”
A follow-up to Raising Sand was long in the works and ultimately shelved, but the project was revived after Krauss heard Calexico’s “Quattro (World Drifts In),” with the duo’s cover opening Raise the Roof.
“[That] was the moment I knew we’d make another album,” Krauss previously said in a statement. “We wanted it to move. We brought other people in, other personalities within the band, and coming back together again in the studio brought a new intimacy to the harmonies.”
Plant and Krauss plan to tour in support of the LP — available to preorder now ahead of its November 19th release — in 2022.
From Rolling Stone US
