Alison Krauss & Union Station – So Long, So Wrong
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Posted On March 1, 1997
As someone once noted, bluegrass somehow suggests a wilder yet simpler time. For Alison Krauss, now the musics undisputed star, that time was the 70s. Krauss grew up listening to traditional bluegrass, as well as such progressive bands as the New South, Boone Creek and New Grass Revival. But lately, shes also confessed her love for 70s rock and even heavy metal. As on 1995s great, genre-exploding breakthrough Now That Ive Found You, she puts all those influences together with old-time gospel and modern pop to come up with another album that traces rousing new horizons in the circle of country sounds.
Opening with an echoic unfurling of fiddle that soon resolves itself in the urgent banjo and guitar licks of the title track, So Long, So Wrong gives up the goods right away. I know Ill be lonesome, Krauss sings, in her bubbling clear little Dolly voice. That brings about a little fear. And even though shes already deep into the sad stuff, theres something perfectly liberating in her lilt. Surely its key to the soulful continuum that includes her sure-fire ensemble, Union Station, and their canny knack for finding and arranging tunes that seem at once revolutionary and timeless.
Theres a big bunch of those here from the sweetly plaintive Deeper Than Crying and starkly filigreed I Can Let Go Now to the rollicking retro-fillip of Little Liza Jane and the bittersweet wonder of It Doesnt Matter. Fans who only recently discovered Krauss may be dismayed to learn she doesnt sing every song. But even the ones she doesnt take the lead on No Place To Hide, The Road Is A Lover, Pain of a Troubled Life, Blue Trail of Sorrow often find their depth in her fiddle or keening harmony vocals. And as for Krauss and Union Stations reputation as the standard-bearers of contemporary bluegrass, So Long, So Wrong proves once again its no brag, just fact.
