Bonnie Raitt

It would be perfectly reasonable to expect a bliss-drenched feel-good album from Bonnie
Raitt at this point in her life and career. After nearly twenty years as a critics' and
musicians' favorite, she finally earned commercial success and industry recognition in 1989
with Nick of Time, and after overcoming a series of personal hardships, she settled into a
secure relationship, marrying actor Michael O'Keefe. Given all that, Raitt would h... More >

One reason it took Raitt two decades to achieve the El Lay iconicity she deserves is her resistance to both folk gentility and studio antisepsis. So praise Don Was for humanizing the control-freak production values she could never get on top of in the '70s. Another is her moral seriousness. So praise songwriters like John Hiatt, Bonnie Hayes, and maybe even Paul Brady for combining heft with hookcraft, and Shirley Eikhard, whoever she is, for "Something to Talk About," the slyest distillation of this rowdy Quaker's sexy ways since "Love Me Like a Man." But after that tell Raitt that no commercial reservation should ever torpedo a "Tangled and Dark," about a deep, long wrangle with love itself, or an "All at Once," about losing the teenage daughter she's never literally had. It's like the guitar she's afraid she hasn't properly mastered--she stops writing at the risk of her own intelligence, idiosyncrasy, and reality. (Grade: A)