Arcadia was released this past March, thus is getting reviewed a little later than usual. It marks the return not so much of Alison Krauss, who's released a string of solo discs over the years as well as two best-selling rooted collaborations with Robert Plant, but of her in the company of recurrent band Union Station. Mostly, till now Union Station has been a bluegrass outfit, holding Krauss, vocalist and fiddler, to a musical genre from which she has strayed on occasion but which she has no desire, apparently and happily, to abandon entirely. I confess I have not followed her career with the obsessive attention that I have paid some others'. There is, however, no denying her more than ordinary talent and her unique approach.

Over the years she has evolved into an eclectic artist with a wider palate that also encompasses traditional folk and a kind of arch acoustic pop reminiscent of something that could have been shaped in a pre-rock era, maybe in an alternate-universe version of the American Songbook. This time around, the always exceptional Union Station boasts bluegrass notables such as Russell Moore, Jerry Douglas, Adam Steffey, Ron Block and more.

Moore steps in to fill in vocal duties when, I infer, Krauss thinks a male perspective would be more effective, most imposingly on "Granite Mills," a meeting of 19th-century lyrics and a crusty melody composed by modern-day folksinger/historian Tim Eriksen. (To the best of my knowledge, "Mills'" sole other recorded appearance, no doubt Krauss's source, is on Spine, by Cordelia's Dad [1998]. The late Cordelia's Dad was a noteworthy trad-folk group Eriksen headed in those days.) A harrowing story with a clear sociopolitical subtext, it recalls a real-life Industrial Age tragedy in Fall River, Massachusetts -- definitely not a number one would have anticipated here, though it may be slightly less shocking when one encounters it on an album that is the product of Krauss's brains and curiosity.

On the other side there's J.D. McPherson's delightfully, un-electrified neo-rockabilly "North Side Gal," almost as surprising in its way as "Granite Mills." I have McPherson's recording in my collection but had forgotten about it. Thanks, Alison and guys, for bringing it back to memory. The opening cut, Jeremy Lister's "Looks Like the End of the Road," on the other hand, is an outstanding example of the kind of gloomy pop spiritual nobody should ever even hope to attempt after Krauss has visited it.

I guess one would have to be even more irritable than I am to find something here to which one objects, though inevitably one likes some things more than other things. Still, the song selection doesn't leave more than limited space for that. Just about anything that passes through your ears, in short, should touch your spirit one way or another. This has to be Alison Krauss and Union Station's most satisfying album to date.