Review: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss at Starlight

Click the photo to see a slide show of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ show at Starlight.

Better Than: Pickin’ on Led Zeppelin

By SCOTT WILSON

Robert Plant may be a bona fide rock god, but he shuffled onto the stage at Starlight last night in a protective crouch, stoop-shouldered as an arthritic uncle called upon to deliver a speech at a wedding. Then he got to the microphone. The once (and future?) Led Zeppelin frontman straightened, parted the curtains of his frizzy mane and became … a relatively sure-footed uncle of orbit-fixing charisma called upon to deliver a speech at a wedding. The nuptials in this case: a foreigner’s unspoiled awe of American song forms joined with a flying wedge of U.S. musicians bent on verisimilitude. Co-headliner Alison Krauss, whose fiddle came out early and worked often, guided Plant through a songbook devised by heroic dilettante T-Bone Burnett and played with wit and impeccable attention to detail by a relaxed band.