Bonnie Raitt, Luck of the Draw (Capitol Records)

For those of us who’ve been Bonnie fans throughout her long career, a recording like this just makes us fall in love with her music all over again. She’s all raw emotion on ballads like “All At Once” (which she wrote), “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and “One Part Be My Lover” (obviously inspired by Raitt’s recent marriage to actor Michael O’Keefe, and a mature lover’s anthem, for sure, it’s nonetheless one of the album’s weakest cuts—the instrumentation is somewhat sappy). It wouldn’t be Raitt without slide guitar and country-blessed tunes like “Papa Come Quick” and John Hiatt’s “No Business” and down and dirty ditties like “Something to Talk About” and “Good Man Good Woman” (with Delbert McClinton). The best cut is a jazz-inspired funk piece, “Tangled and Dark,” with the Tower of Power horns and an extremely elegant trumpet solo by Lee Thornberg. Bonnie has always had a great knack for choosing good material, but in hooking up with producer Don Was (who also produced Nick of Time, her Grammy-winning album, the one that made her an “overnight success”), Raitt has finally locked into a winning commercial formula. Her own songwriting is getting richer too as time goes by: “Tangled and Dark” just couldn’t be better. It’s nice to know that she’s still the same Bonnie, just getting finer with time, like wine. What a woman! And what an album!