Artist:     Alison Krauss

Album:     Windy City

Label:     Capitol Records

Release Date:     02/17/2017

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Windy City is a 15-track offering from one of modern country/Americana music’s current queens. For the past few decades, Krauss has consistently and pretty well constantly excited and delivered some stunning, clear and delightful albums that are firmly rooted in the expressive Nashville sound machine, peppered with top-dollar sidemen and woman and always with a shrewdly near-underplayed eye on enormous commercial success. Windy City looks pretty much bound to continue this remarkable trend.

The album is already sweeping everything before it aside in its path to the top of the US Americana charts, ensuring huge sales and probably Grammy nominations for Krauss once again. Krauss of course surprised many with her remarkable work alongside Led Zep frontman Robert Plant and the multiple award-winning Raising Sand album a few years ago.

This time round, she again manages to surprise to some extent by covering a range of better-known, traditional country tracks while also pulling in some excellent, new material and mixing the whole thing together with her soaring, soprano voice providing the necessary gell that binds the entire project together.

Featured covers are taken from the work of country-legends like Brenda Lee, Willie Nelson and even Glen Campbell whose easy-listening favourite ‘Gentle on My Mind’ is included in the mix. Many of her usual musical cohorts ride alongside her with both Ron Block and Dan Tyminski from Union Station adding their confident and composed banjo and guitar work.

Windy City is, as might be expected, an endearing offering from a lady who knows exactWillie Nelson and even Glen Campbell whose gentle only what she’s about though it does in some ways lack much of the earlier Americana sparkle of her work with Union Station for Rounder Records.

-Iain Patience