makes her so effective.

The unevenness is mostly in the material. Sexual and emotional ambivalence is at the heart of Bonnie Raitt's best work, so it figures that a certain ambivalence would carry over into her actual choice of what to sing. While her reputation is for raunch, she has always had a fondness for rather empty, precious writers like Eric Kaz, and Kaz's "I'm Blowin' Away" and especially "My First Night Alone without You" fail to connect.

However, most of this LP is prime Bonnie Raitt. She is the best of the many interpreters of Allen Toussaint, and "What Do You Want the Boy to Do?" is one of his most melodic recent efforts. "Good Enough" and "Pleasin' Each Other" get similarly strong treatments. "Sugar Mama," with its bottleneck guitar and stomping beat, is the hard blues of the album, and "Sweet and Shiny Eyes" is the boozy joke cut.

Bonnie Raitt has yet to make an album that's solid all the way through, but when she gets the right song, she is the toughest and most evocative female singer of the bunch. This album has its fair share of such songs. (RS 201)

JOHN MORTHLAND