Bonnie Raitt – Souls Alike

Bonnie Raitt’s Starbucks appeal was established long before she scored as one of Ray Charles’ duets partners on his huge-selling swan song for the coffee chain. Among pop artists of a certain age, she has long provided the equivalent of comfort food with her warm, lived-in vocals, bluesy reliability and resilience. There’s never any fear that she’s going to compromise herself in the name of fashion, and if she does stray from familiar stylistic terrain, as she does here and there on Souls Alike, you know it won’t be long before she returns to home base.

Raitt can be a bit self-conscious and derivative in honoring her blues heroes and heroines, but she imparts a relaxed, fully formed sense of self here. That she does so without turning to the usual songwriting suspects, relying instead on new sources including Maia Sharp, Emory Joseph and underrated southern rock veteran Randall Bramblett, makes her achievement even fresher. As John Prine and Nanci Griffith did on their recent albums, she takes producing credit for the first time, with Latin Playboy and engineer par excellence Tchad Blake credited as co-producer.

“Crooked Crown” is given a playful psychedelic edge, complete with overdubbed answering vocal by Raitt. “Deep Water”, previously recorded by Jude Johnstone, indulges in edgy atmospheric effects. But the album butters its bread with the soulful shuffle of Lee Clayton and Pat McLaughlin’s “Two Lights In The Nighttime” and the leisurely swamp-rock of “I Will Not Be Broken”, which Raitt says was informed by the recent death of both of her parents and her brother’s serious illness. So, one assumes, were the ballads — “I Don’t Want Anything To Change”, “So Close”, “The Bed I Made” — which are among her loveliest and most affecting ever. Not only won’t she be broken, she won’t slow down, either.