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 have been entitled to make the follow-up to Nick of Time a uniformly uplifting testament to her New-Found Contentment.
its predecessor, draws on the pop savvy of producer Don Was (who coproduces with Raitt this time) – and the support of an impressive array of guest musicians and song-writers – to sharpen and polish her earthy hybrid of blues, country and R&B. At its peaks, though,
Luck evokes epiphanies that are richer and more poignant than
Time's sensible, adult ruminations on living and learning. Where Raitt's previous album was mature and spirited, her new one is tender and insightful; tempering pathos with the feisty courage that has helped bring her to this point, Raitt sings about the ways in which life instills cynicism and how she struggles resolutely not to succumb to it.
Luck of the Draw starts off cheerfully enough with "Something to Talk About," a catchy, endearing come-on to a male friend on the brink of becoming something more. "It took a rumor to make me wonder/Now I'm convinced I'm going under," Raitt sings, her whiskey-laced mezzo-soprano opening up like a sly, playful grin. Her voice, a little less sweet than it was in the Seventies but handsomely seasoned and agile, has been most emotive in recent years; age and experience have endowed Raitt with a subtlety and an effortless emotional authority reminiscent of the great soul singers, as well as the blues legends she emulated in her youth. Her singing has also never sounded sexier, whether she's sliding into the ingratiating chorus of "Slow Ride" or warning, over the lithe reggae rhythms of "Come to Me," that "I don't need another well-spent night.... I wanna look my baby in the eye/And know there's nothing left to chance."
Even in its lighter moments – "Good Man, Good Woman," a cheeky duet with Delbert McClinton, and "Not the Only One," a graceful ode to redeeming love penned by Paul Brady – Luck of the Draw is often haunted by a strong sense of past heartbreak, alluding either directly or implicitly to scars left by disappointment and betrayal. On "No Business," a sturdy John Hiatt contribution that benefits from Raitt's characteristically supple slide-guitar playing, she sings, "I kept track of all the love that I gave him/And on paper it looked pretty good/He left a note that said he couldn't stay here/As if I could." "One Part Be My Love
