Recording of the Month

Alison Krauss & Union Station: Arcadia
Down The Road Records (16/44.1 FLAC, Qobuz). 2025. Alison Krauss & Union Station, prod.
Performance *****
Sonics ****

When singer/fiddler Alison Krauss was a teenager with a solo album under her belt, she teamed up with some fellow musicians to form Union Station. Starting in 1989, Rounder Records released the band's albums regularly—seven of them including the soundtrack to Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?—ending with 2011's Paper Airplane. Although they continued to play together, most notably in a 2014 tour with Willie Nelson, Krauss and Union Station didn't make it back into the studio for 14 years.

Now Rounder Records' founders have a new label, Down The Road Records, and Krauss and the band have finally reteamed for another album and a major tour.

Arcadia is a stylishly played and sumptuously produced collection of 10 songs ranging from traditional to new. What ties the tracklist together is a wash of nostalgia blended with an echo of worldly pain. Arguably, there's no combination more fitting for bluegrass.

The nostalgia shows up in Krauss's collaboration with original band members Ron Block (banjo and guitar) and Barry Bales (guitar and backing vocals) plus two musicians who joined in the 1990s: Jerry Douglas (dobro and lap steel) and Dan Tyminski (mandolin and guitar). Krauss also calls on her musical past by including some songs by Robert Lee Castleman, who won a Grammy in 2002 for "The Lucky One," which was premiered by Krauss and the band on their album New Favorite.

One of those Castleman numbers is "The Wrong Way," which is rich with longing, its texture pierced by plaintive dobro licks. Like the theme of the whole album, the lyrics acknowledge life's sadnesses but refuse to be defeated by them. Castleman also penned "Forever," which again defies the challenges of existence: "I always keep my fingers crossed." The simple arrangement, featuring a lightly syncopated fingerpicked pattern on guitar, sets Krauss's voice in high relief.

The guitar takes a different approach to accompaniment in "The Hangman," doubling the song's melody, which sets a 1951 poem by Maurice Ogden to music by Viktor Krauss (Alison's brother). Featured on vocals is Russell Moore, a newcomer to Union Station but an experienced hand at bluegrass singing, primarily with the band IIIrd Tyme Out. There's no room for hope in this lyric: More about fear than pain, "The Hangman" hauntingly warns against standing idly by as criminals take over running society.

The band reaches farther back into American history for another flavor of sorrow in "Richmond on the James," an 1863 song about a Civil War battle. It's interesting to compare this version to the much sparser 1994 performance—coincidentally on Rounder Records—by Anne Hills and Cindy Mangsen, singing in mountain harmony accompanied only by banjo. Krauss's vocal interpretation eschews folkiness, taking the key up a third and the tempo up a few ticks in a sparkling arrangement featuring Block and Tyminski. It's a musical jewel, even if its elegant sheen takes away some of its mournfulness.

In another old song, Moore takes the lead in the traditional ballad "Granite Mills," recounting the horrific tale of a factory fire. The somber, percussive guitar part expresses the relentless, plodding life of laborers in the days before any kind of worker protections. When Krauss takes over the melody on her fiddle, she presses hard on the strings to capture the song's anger.

Moore also sings Bob Lucas's thoughtful "Snow," which doubles as a showcase for the more delicate side of Krauss's fiddle playing. Although there are bleak lines—"Now all I wish is a bitter wind that only brings me snow"—the lyrics acknowledge that, while snow can be harsh, it can also be soft and cleansing.

A welcome infusion of lightheartedness, Moore's bluegrass version of JD McPherson's "North Side Gal" is a fun departure from the songwriter's rockabilly original from 2010 (on Rounder Records, of course). This is also Douglas's chance to shine on lap steel, two-stepping through a twangy duet with Tyminski's mandolin.

Throughout the album, the song choices demonstrate a shifting attitude toward the human experience that most listeners will find sympathy with. Some of Krauss's best singing is in Sarah Siskind's "One Ray of Shine," her sound diaphanous in a melody that seems to float like light on the surface of a lake, its glimmering highlights accented by the timbre of the mandolin.

Symbolically, Jeremy Lister composed both the album's wistful opening, "Looks Like the End of Road" and its heart-swelling closer, "There's a Light Up Ahead." Krauss has said that she first heard "End of the Road" during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its minor-key phrases and desolate lyrics give a sense of profound loneliness. "Light Up Ahead," on the other hand, in an auspicious major key despite its languid tempo, insists on hope. Each verse falls step by step downward only to take a huge leap up, as if self-correcting.

Krauss's vocal intonation is perfect, the nuances of her dynamics and tone color always complex and effective. Whether the lyrics are focused on tragedy or possibility, her voice commands attention, and the members of Union Station know just how to set off its glow.—Anne E. Johnson