Manchester Apollo
Most people expected Robert Plant to saunter on to a British stage this summer, shake his helterskelter hair and belt out Led Zeppelin songs. With one deliriously successful gig under their belts, the feeling was that Zeppelin would reprise their reunion. The money was on the table. Arenas were poised. Private jets were ready to scramble.
Few people could have foreseen that the explosive introduction to Zeppelin's 'Black Dog' would, in fact, be coaxed out of a banjo rather than ripped from Jimmy Page's guitar. Or that, as the sun finally shone, a heavy rendition of 'When the Levee Breaks' would be ushered in by the blare of two fiddles.
In pop, there is often talk of pressure when a band need to follow a successful album. But the plight of Coldplay is as nothing compared to the hundredweight of hassle from several continents bearing down on Plant, the man keeping Led Zeppelin on ice. The rock Titan has chosen to ignore the clamour of millions of fans so he can tour Europe and the US with a God-fearing, bluegrass princess and some mandolins and autoharps.
On this second night of this unLedded tour, Plant is bearing up well, considering. Rangy and buoyant, he exudes pure pleasure as he purrs through 'Rich Woman', the opening track of Raising Sand, the album he released last year with dulcet-voiced fiddler Alison Krauss. 'She got the money/ And I got the honey,' he smirks, as the audience savours this sweet substitute for the lemon juice that once, infamously, ran down Plant's leg.
Krauss, meanwhile, is a vision in ruched pink, purring gamely along with Plant. She probably doesn't realise that she is performing a kind of Yoko Ono role in the minds of less evolved fans, keeping the greatest rock band the world has ever seen off the road. In rock money, Krauss may be the junior partner, a lamb with which Plant's lion can lie down, but Krauss owns more Grammys than any woman alive.
Their relationship on stage is easy and fond, as they pal around in between the dusty, lovelorn cover versions. Plant's old foil Page was handy with the guitar; Krauss has her fiddle, the instrument with which she first found bluegrass fame. Unlike most virtuoso players, however, Krauss shows a terrific restraint tonight, blending in with the sublime backing band (maverick junk-shop drummer Jay Bellerose, double bassist Dennis Crouch, multi-instrumentalist Stuart Duncan, country guitarist Buddy Miller, and band leader T Bone Burnett) for the greater good of the songs. She comes closest to home on 'Green Pastures', a standard once covered by Emmylou Harris.
But the emphasis is firmly on the strange, haunted new place Krauss and Plant have created together, one where Plant's screams are replaced by whispers and the Midwestern goody-goody Krauss can pretend to be a gypsy (as she does on the haunting 'Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us').
The highlights of the album unfurl elegantly across one-and-three-quarter hours: the wonderfully downbeat 'Killing the Blues', the ringing version of Page and Plant's 'Please Read the Letter' that surpasses the original; a spellbinding 'Fortune Teller'.
One of Raising Sand's latent pleasures is Townes Van Zandt's 'Nothing', a song about musicianship so desolate that 'it's hard to get through, or over,' Plant says. It's the one moment of the night when you want the ringing guitars turned down, so that you can hear Plant aching through lines like 'Being born is going blind/ And bowin' down a thousand times/ To echoes strung on pure temptation...'
Well outside her own comfort zone, the demure Krauss sings from a male perspective twice, lending 'Through the Morning, Through the Night' (a Gene Clark song) and 'Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson' a faint Sapphic slant. Their hushed and pregnant reworking of 'Black Dog', meanwhile, is especially radical, with Plant and Krauss mouthing the orgasmic 'ah-ah's with impish restraint. Krauss takes on the role of Sandy Denny on an intense version of 'Battle of Evermore' on which Krauss hollers out 'Bring it back!' as loudly as Plant.
She is very much Plant's equal on stage. In 2004, Krauss agreed to duet with Plant on a Leadbelly song when the bluesman was inducted into the Rock'n' Roll Hall of Fame. But when talk turned to an album, it was Krauss who brought in T Bone Burnett as producer.
The two had collaborated on the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou, the film which put a little bluegrass into every American home. (We get a little bit of it tonight, when Krauss sings 'Down by the River to Pray' a capella, joined by Duncan, Miller and Plant on harmonies.) Live, as on record, this unlikely coupling is really a lopsided threesome.
T Bone Burnett provided many of the songs that ended up on the record and carefully constructed the atmosphere of echoing stillness that made Raising Sand great. In the words of a recent Plant album, he is a mighty rearranger.
Tonight, he leads the band and plays guitar, looking like a country vicar about to be defrocked. When Burnett sings the Cajun standard 'Bon Temps Rouler' (the semi-official motto of New Orleans), it provides a little key to the cogs of this project. 'She don't do nothing but raise sand all night,' runs a line. 'Raising sand' means to kick up a fuss, which hardly describes the dynamic between Plant and Krauss.
You can only conclude Plant's the one raising sand, digging his heels in, stamping around gleefully in the American roots music that is his current inspiration.
Would everyone here rather be at a Led Zeppelin gig? Some would. But Raising Sand has sold upwards of two million copies, becoming the most successful non-Zeppelin album Plant has ever made, as well as Krauss's bestseller. There are Krauss fans here, too, and connoisseurs of Americana. Haunted and spare, an antidote to the entire bloated notion of superstar collaboration, Raising Sand was crying out to be toured. You can see - and hear and feel - why, in Plant's mind, Valhalla had to wait.
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