it's usually a cry for help: "Puhleeze take me seriously." And sure enough, Pat says she's thirty-eight and not a kid anymore. So she wants to be Bonnie Raitt – ho-hum. But then again, there's an argument to be made for good singers letting down their hair, not worrying about being sincere and just having fun singing. And though the best thing rock people can do to the blues is destroy them (à la Led Zeppelin), and though Pat certainly doesn't do that, her attitude on True Love is a lot closer to Joe Jackson's on Jumpin' Jive (or even to Madonna's on I'm Breathless) than to, say, Neil Young's on This Note's for You. Which is to say that she's not reverent enough to take this shit as gospel.

The bottom line, I guess, is that Benatar treats the blues like the cabaret shtick they ultimately are in 1991. She gets sleazy, sultry and growly; slurs a zany Wynonie Harris jump-jazz novelty about a spouse's coming home drunk; and pulls an I-pay-the-rent-you-pay-the-alimony gender-fuck move on B.B. King's "Payin' the Cost to Be the Boss" and "I've Got Papers on You." She gurgles Albert King's "I Get Evil" like she's in New Orleans and "I Feel Lucky," by her husband, Neil Giraldo, like she's in Vegas. Roomful of Blues, your typically ingratiating, post-Belushi, frat-circuit band of hacks, honks its brass-chart bloat behind and around her. But at least Benatar's smart enough to finish with a Christmas carol, Charles Brown's touching "Please Come Home for Christmas." There ought to be a law that holidays are the only time nostalgia is allowed. (RS 607)

CHUCK EDDY