New Song of the Day #25: Alison Krauss & Union Station "Looks Like the End of the Road"

With due respect to Robert Plant's rebranding, it's nice to have Krauss back in bluegrass.

I first saw Alison Krauss & Union Station play at the Minnesota Zoo in the mid ‘90s, and by far the wildest sound in the place came from the pretty young fiddler in denim overalls — her fiddle, sure, but more so that gliding, gilded soprano, brilliant and birdlike. This was before she went down to the river to pray in O Brother Where Art Thou, before her Union Station bandmate Dan Tyminski sang “Man of Constant Sorrow” from George Clooney’s lip-syncing mouth, before her duet with Brad Paisley on “Whiskey Lullaby” became a contender for the greatest mainstream country duet of the 21st century. And before her LPs with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant made each of ‘em reimagine their day jobs.

Now, near 15 years since the last Krauss & Union Station album, is this taste of a new one, called Arcadia. The first line we hear from the woman who spent much of 2024 touring the country with Plant, often in tandem with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson as part of the Outlaw Festival, is “It’s the end of the circus…”

You can’t say Alison Krauss doesn’t have a sense of humor.

That voice is still wild and marvelous, maybe a bit burnished in the highest part of her range, very nicely so. Tyminski is gone, evidently, replaced on guitar and vocals by Russell Moore, a bluegrass star in his own right via IIIrd Tyme Out, his band for the past few decades. Dobro player Jerry Douglas, another star, makes Union Station a bluegrass supergroup. But it’s Krauss’ band, as ever, and it’ll be nice to see her back at center stage. And if Robert Plant wants to drop in for the occasional guest appearance, all the better.