Post by fogcitygal on Dec 18, 2004 2:49:14 GMT -5
From The Bufffalo News:
"Alison Krauss & Union Station
Lonely Runs Both Ways
Alison Krauss and her Union Station continue to astound, setting a new career height with the mournful "Lonely Runs Both Ways," the band's first studio recording in three years and easily its strongest.
Though Krauss has gained more crossover success than most musicians as dedicated to craft as she is - 17 Grammys, some 8 million records sold - she and bandmates Dan Tyminski, Jerry Douglas, Barry Bales and Ron Block continue to challenge listeners. To that end, "Lonely" is almost a concept album, a meditation on love and loss that is unflinching in its embrace of heartbreak.
Somehow, the band manages to add levity to these despairingly beautiful tracks, perhaps because they are, to a man and woman, outstanding, virtuosic musicians schooled in bluegrass but unafraid of folk, country, and even pop-oriented material. These songs, written by band members, and including covers of some of their favorite writers, including Woody Guthrie, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Robert Lee Castleman, Mindy Smith and John Scott Sherrill and Del McCoury, are beautiful bummers. It takes a singer with Krauss' immense gift to make despair sound so sexy.
The centerpiece of the album is the band's take on the Welch/Rawlings tune "Wouldn't Be So Bad," a haunting ode to world weariness cornerstoned on Douglas' subtle, dead-on dobro licks, Block's slide guitar, and of course, Krauss' ethereal vocal. Elsewhere, Tyminski's take on Guthrie's "Pastures of Plenty" comes just in time, casting aside the melancholy for some serious pickin' and grinnin'. On the Douglas-penned instrumental "Union House Branch," the band struts its wares and proves itself to be one of the most lithe, able-bodied units currently making music. Inspired, and inspiring."
- Jeff Miers
"Alison Krauss & Union Station
Lonely Runs Both Ways
Alison Krauss and her Union Station continue to astound, setting a new career height with the mournful "Lonely Runs Both Ways," the band's first studio recording in three years and easily its strongest.
Though Krauss has gained more crossover success than most musicians as dedicated to craft as she is - 17 Grammys, some 8 million records sold - she and bandmates Dan Tyminski, Jerry Douglas, Barry Bales and Ron Block continue to challenge listeners. To that end, "Lonely" is almost a concept album, a meditation on love and loss that is unflinching in its embrace of heartbreak.
Somehow, the band manages to add levity to these despairingly beautiful tracks, perhaps because they are, to a man and woman, outstanding, virtuosic musicians schooled in bluegrass but unafraid of folk, country, and even pop-oriented material. These songs, written by band members, and including covers of some of their favorite writers, including Woody Guthrie, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Robert Lee Castleman, Mindy Smith and John Scott Sherrill and Del McCoury, are beautiful bummers. It takes a singer with Krauss' immense gift to make despair sound so sexy.
The centerpiece of the album is the band's take on the Welch/Rawlings tune "Wouldn't Be So Bad," a haunting ode to world weariness cornerstoned on Douglas' subtle, dead-on dobro licks, Block's slide guitar, and of course, Krauss' ethereal vocal. Elsewhere, Tyminski's take on Guthrie's "Pastures of Plenty" comes just in time, casting aside the melancholy for some serious pickin' and grinnin'. On the Douglas-penned instrumental "Union House Branch," the band struts its wares and proves itself to be one of the most lithe, able-bodied units currently making music. Inspired, and inspiring."
- Jeff Miers