Alison Krauss & Union Station, Festival Hall - review - Music - Arts

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Still, one booker's jazz is another's bluegrass, country, roots pop amalgam and, in his solo slot, dobro player Jerry Douglas did cover jazz scientologist Chick Corea's Spain. Krauss and Union Station - collaborators rather than singer and backing band for more than two decades - wore their musical dexterity lightly. In clumsy hands, roots-ish music is often bogged down by its bar-room simplicity but last night it was turned into something altogether more extravagant. Baby Now That I've Found You, a UK Number 1 for The Foundations in 1967, was upgraded into a tale of obsession, while Dust Bowl Children, rattled out by Dan Tyminski, George Clooney's singing voice on O Brother Where Art Thou?, was as tongue-twisting as world-class hip-hop.

The sleeve to Krauss's current album, Paper Airplane, suggests the 40-year-old from urban Illinois is the first pop star to flaunt girdle-wearing and that sense of slight oddness asserted itself on her admirably droll band introductions, the most gentle of which saw Tyminski outed as a Kit Kat Caramel aficionado. Whether singing in a voice as near-operatic as it was near-backwoods or playing fiddle as if Rome was burning, Krauss was as mercurial as she was untouchable, but when, in the encore, she and Union Station gathered around one microphone to breathe new, subtly choreographed life into When You Say Nothing At All, the effect was heartstopping. Award-winning even...

Alison Krauss & Union Station play the Royal Festival Hall tonight and tomorrow (0844 875 0073 londonjazzfestival.org.uk)

Alison Krauss & Union Station
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road, Waterloo, SE1 8XX