Killing the Blues

Last Wednesday, I travelled a long way for a very short meeting. It’s an occasional and necessary part of my job, so I don’t mind, but it does present me with some interesting choices about how to kill the time during interminable train journeys. On this occasion, I had finished my book on the outward trip, and as soon as I sat down in a seat for the return, I realised my mistake. The carriage was awash with, in fact totally overcome by, the last hurrah of a school trip. To put it more simply, it was full of noisy sixth-formers from a posh girls’ school. Other than one sitting quite close to me, who was arguing about the Middle East with a member of the school’s staff, they were mainly shouting at each other. “Emily, which house are you in?” “Ellis!” “Ugh!”

In time, the guy who was supposed to be supervising them tired of the Middle East peace process and opted to blot out the roar with his iPod. I chose to do the same. First up, an initial listen to Lizz Wright’s The Orchard – as it turns out, a gem of an album which hit me immediately. But more of that another time. All I will say about that album for now is that it contains only 13 songs, rather than the 50-odd that were needed to last me the journey. So as the last chords of a really very good cover of the Band’s It Makes No Difference faded into nothingness, I selected another recent release to help me with my continued cocooning process – Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

This is a lovely album. It has a strange subdued quality, unrelated to the objective dynamics of its songs, which change, as you would expect, in keeping with their moods. But even the loudest, most raucous numbers have a controlled and considered quality. I think this is partly a result of the talent of the musicians – crack performers all – but also a deliberate ploy by the producer, T-Bone Burnett, to emphasise the beauty of the two singers’ voices. On the one hand, we have Robert Plant – the blues-rock screamer of thirty years ago, re-emerging on this record as a force for wise, lived-in blues, the passing of the years dampening the volume but not the inherent power of what he sings. And across the mic from him, we have Alison Krauss, possessor of a lovely country-styled voice – one which is simultaneously a stereotypically ‘good country voice’, and a slightly edgy and versatile instrument.

As with every time I listen to this album, I find it difficult not to become fixated on the second track. This is something of a shame, as there are many fine songs beyond the opening brace. Their take on Gene Clark’s Polly is a faithful and yet fresh interpretation. Please Read the Letter builds and builds but never makes you think that Plant has done all this before. And Townes van Zandt would, I like to think, approve whole-heartedly of the haunting menace of their version of his Nothin’. But by the time I listen to any of those songs, I’ve listened to Killing the Blues at least twice.

Raising Sand generally defies classification, but despite its genre-defying title, Killing the Blues is a blues song. It fits all of the requirements: it is about love; it uses non-human objects and events as metaphors; and it avoids really complicated double-meaning. The chords aren’t too complicated – as in all the best blues. And the instrumentation augments and decorates the emotion delivered through the vocals.

The song opens with gentle strummed guitar and a simple drum rhythm; the first real colour comes from a pedal steel, adding a country touch to proceedings. When Plant and Krauss enter, they enter together, as they do in all of the album’s best songs. Each of them has a chance to shine on their own, with the other singing backup, echo, harmony or whatever. But when they sing together, they harmonise so neatly that you couldn’t say which of them has the melody and which is picking out the counterpointing notes. And because the song was written by one person, Roly Salley, and sung from that perspective, Plant and Krauss meld their voices and sing, together, as that lone narrator. The first line brings in that universal provider of metaphors for love – nature:

Leaves were falling, just like embers
In colors red and gold they set us on fire

So there’s the first less-than-literal lyric – we’re talking about leaves, not embers, it’s just that the leaves are like embers. But nonetheless, their colours are so stark that they set us on fire.

Burning just like a moonbeam in our eyes

Imagery within imagery, then, and you can hardly fail to notice it, because although the band weaves in and out, shifting and stopping and moving, it never rises above a whispered concurrence with the lines of the singers. So you hear every word, and relish the tone which delivers them.

By the time the second verse arrives, it’s confession time:

Now I am guilty of something
I hope you never do

It isn’t entirely clear what the narrator is guilty of, but the point is that there is a story behind the naturalist’s world-view – essential for a decent blues song. The refrain, although phrased as a description of a deed done, isn’t, I wouldn’t have thought, the confession. It’s more a culmination, a release from the guilt, than the initial cause of it:

Somebody said they saw me
Swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud
Killing the blues

His crime isn’t that he killed the blues; his crime was something else, and by killing the blues, he acquitted himself, or at any rate wiped it from his mind. By the last verse all we’re left with is a thoughtful lament, and a comment on some other conversation:

Now you ask me just to leave you
To go out on my own and get what I need to

That last line comes as a surprise, and I had to hear it a few times before I really believed in its existence. Amidst all this pensive, loving, regretful, tenderness, the narrator employs a classic old-school blues device – “get what I need to”. I need to go away from you and get what I need, and it’s okay, because you suggested I go! A bit clichéd, a good deal conflicted, and the clinching moment in viewing this song as a real piece of blues.

So don’t take the economy of the guitar break, the gentle murmur of the acoustic guitar, or the paced beauty of the vocals as signs that this is anything other than a down-home blues song. It’s dressed up in glad-rags, but the history, the tragedy, and the menace of the blues are in there, when you begin to disrobe this song. Enjoy it – but check out the rest of the album too.