Send "Alison Krauss " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 The cover imagery of Paper Airplane, Alison Krauss’ first album with longtime collaborators Union Station since 2004, is a calculated visual abstract of the nature of this musical partnership. Surrounded by the earnest gentlemen of her band in their minimal 19th century attire, Krauss is glamorous and ethereal. She seems poised on the cusp of floating gently away from their sepia company and the spartan field tent they occupy. The evident wind-machine manipulating her golden locks diminishes the effect of the Civil War-era setting, but then Krauss would tend to upend such purposeful anachronism even without any unseen modern trappings.Despite their central role in the popular re-emergence of bluegrass over the last couple of decades, the alliance between the silver-voiced Krauss and the elaborate, rustic technicians of Union Station has always been marked by a productive tension between the faded rural world and the modern urban one. Krauss’ tone of tensile delicacy and exquisite rise-and-fall phrasing has become a staple on both pop and country radio at least partly because it tenderly shifts the axis of bluegrass away from the past and into the present, and she has pulled along her collaborators as well. Bluegrass, like all country music, is at its heart inescapably nostalgia-reliant. But country’s great leap forward in the corporate music marketplace was predicated on the genre trading a measure of its traditional longing for the brazen, polished immediacy of contemporary pop, and bluegrass was not entirely immune to this seismic change. Krauss and Union Station are rarely brazen or immediate, but theirs is most certainly a very polished sound. As lovely as their songs (a mix of traditional tunes and originals penned by Robert Lee Castleman) can be, they sparkle with such precise and contemporary production that the essential, rough-edged alchemy of the genre is lessened. In a live setting, the banjo work of Ron Block and Jerry Douglas’ Dobro resonator guitar lines gallop away in rapid backwoods fury, but such virtuosity feels more assembly-line on studio recordings (for this reason, a 2002 live double album remains my favorite release by Krauss and Union Station)....full text |
| Guardian |
| Raising Sand, Krauss's triumphant collaboration with Robert Plant, was never going to be the act of reinvention for the bluegrass star that it was for the ex-Zep singer. Reunited with her customary band, she cruises through a set of well-flossed modern country where the picking, on dobro, banjo, guitar and mandolin, is exemplary, but the material routine. Krauss contributes nothing self-penned and the job falls to journeyman writers, with a brace of well-judged covers for ballast (Richard Thompson's "Dimming of the Day" is a highpoint). While Krauss's crystalline vocals delight (not so Dan Tyminski's hollers), the album refuses to become more than its often pleasant parts....full text |
| Pastemagazine |
| If Alison Krauss felt any pressure when she went in to record Paper Airplanes, her follow-up to 2004’s triple Grammy-winning Lonely Runs Both Ways and Raising Sand, her collaboration with Robert Plant — which went on to garner an additional six Grammys – it is impossible to hear it anywhere on the album. Whatever blood, sweat and tears were shed during the creation of this beautifully realized cycle of songs are invisible as each performance comes off as exhilarating, natural and blissfully unforced. In every instance, Paper Airplanes rises to the impossibly high bar set by its predecessors to form what may well be the finest album Krauss has ever released. The sound Alison Krauss and her longtime bandmates in Union Station create continues to express an intuition and flow that is rarely heard in country music. Dan Timinski’s pristine guitar playing and worn-in vocals are as essential and impressive as ever, while bluegrass legend Jerry Douglas’ dobro playing is stellar throughout. But, not surprisingly, Krauss’ vocals are the centerpiece, and her mezzo soprano has never sounded as pure as it does on this new set of songs. Her range continues to stagger, and nowhere is this more evident than it is on her cover of Richard and Linda Thompson’s “Dimming of the Day.” While she wisely chooses not to descend into the heart of darkness that washed over the original version, Krauss effortlessly holds each note as she pulls off the long phrases and diabolical range required without ever faltering, effortlessly walking the line between sugary sweetness and tragic desperation to bring the song home. This song alone is reason enough to buy the album, but it would be a mistake to characterize Paper Airplanes as a one-hit wonder. Some will love the traditional vibe of “Lay My Burden Down” while others will gravitate more to the interpretive skills she brings to bear on a stunning version of Jackson Browne’s “My Opening Farewell.” Paper Airplanes features a stellar set of songs that should continue to expand upon Alison Krauss’ already-great reputation....full text |
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