It’s Friday, which means it’s time for Spark’s music expert and legendary L.A. radio DJ Nic Harcourt to weigh in on what new music he’s got on repeat at the moment. Below, he shares his newest picks added to his Spark Radio playlist and shares a spotlight on his favorite earworm of the week.
New this week:
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss: Can’t Let Go
Chrisol: Juliet
Luna Luna: Early Morning
The Cribs: Swinging At Shadows
Trace Mountains: AMERICA
Vanishing Twin: Phase One Million
Ladyhawke: Think About You
Motrik: Silver Twin
The KIllers: Runaway Horses (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)
SPOTLIGHT:
Back in 2007 Robert Plant and Alison Krauss released a collaborative album, Raising Sand. Immediately loved by critics across the board and a surprise winner of the Album Of The Year Grammy in 2009, fans of the album were hoping for a follow-up and fourteen years later they’ve announced Raise the Roof, due out November 19 via Rounder Records. Like Raising Sand, it was produced by T Bone Burnett and with contributions from Jay Bellerose, Marc Ribot, David Hidalgo (Los Lobos), Bill Frisell, Buddy Miller, Dennis Crouch, Viktor Krauss, and Russ Pahl, it was worth the wait. The album is chock full of covers of songs by Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint, The Everly Brothers, Anne Briggs, Geeshie Wiley, Bert Jansch, and more, as well as an original by Plant and Krauss called “High and Lonesome.”
Krauss says that she knew she and Plant would make another album together when she heard Calexico’s “Quattro (World Drifts In),” off their 2003 album Feast of Wire. “We wanted it to move,” she continued. “We brought other people in, other personalities within the band, and coming back together again in the studio brought a new intimacy to the harmonies.”
“You hear something and you go ‘Man, listen to that song, we got to sing that song!,’” Plant says. “It’s a vacation, really — the perfect place to go that you least expected to find.” The first single is their take on the Randy Weeks penned “Can’t Let Go,” and first recorded by Lucinda Williamson for her Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.
Plant and Krauss are also planning on taking the album on the road in 2022.
