The album met with critical acclaim, earning an average score of 87 from reviews compiled by Metacritic.

[11] Allmusic hailed it "one of the most effortless-sounding pairings in modern popular music", but stated that some songs "(felt) like (they were) tossed off".

Entertainment Weekly described the selection as "eclectic",[14] while Village Voice said, "Burnett flaunts his typical curatorial genius with a whole set of 'have we met before?'

[16] The BBC said the musicians "make this a stunning, dark, brooding collection, comparable in tone to Daniel Lanois's masterful job on Dylan's Time Out of Mind.

There's one track called 'Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us', which sounds like an epic funeral march: it's haunting and spooky, and Alison Krauss's voice can just make you shiver.

"[24] The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling about 112,000 copies in its first week, the highest chart position for either artists' solo work, although Plant had previously reached #1 several times with Led Zeppelin.

[29] According to Ken Irwin of Rounder Records, and producer Burnett, the duo started work on a second album in 2009.

"We'd finished everything in ten days in Nashville, and I rented a car and went down the Natchez Trace to Oxford, Mississippi, across to Clarksdale and down into Helena, Arkansas, looking for those ghosts… and thought to myself, 'How can this be?