Album of the day: Bonnie Raitt, “Souls Alike”

Bonnie Raitt
Souls Alike (Capitol Cd B0009ZE9K8)

An extremely successful singer and guitarist in the United States, Bonnie Raitt has now become an authentic icon of the scene
musical thanks to her instrumental ability (she is a great slide guitar soloist) and the astute pop mixes of records such as “Nick of Time” and “Luck of the Draw”, which gave her mass success quantifiable in many millions of copies sold.

Bonnie has been on the scene for a long time, her first albums with Warner Bros. date back to the early seventies as well as her collaborations with Jackson Browne, Little Feat, Linda Ronstadt and in general all the musicians of the Californian area, however she is very little known in Italy despite enjoying excellent and widespread credit among the European public; the reason for this lack of interest in our country is truly incomprehensible given that her records have everything it takes to please listeners; good songs, gritty performances, top notch vocal performances (live she's really amazing, you can hear her on the album “Road Tested”).

After all, if the Italian public is still swooning over the watered-down music of Dire Straits, we can imagine what would happen if they discovered authentic American talent, strongly linked to the blues and New Orleans style (Bonnie has also collaborated with giants of the genre , including BB King and John Lee Hooker).
Souls Alike is the fifteenth in the series of her solo studio albums, and for the first time Bonnie took care of the production herself, reducing the instrumentation even further and also eliminating much of the pop veneer present in previous records.

Songs like “God Was in the Water” and “I Will Not Be Broken” are effective thanks to the sparse and powerful sound that Bonnie's band designs around them; nothing revolutionary, let's be clear: Raitt certainly doesn't intend to alienate its hard-won audience with products that are experimental or not very accessible, we're still in the high rankings; quality is not lacking even in episodes more marked by the funk style such as “Trinkets” and “Love on One Condition” (which seems like a remake of “Tell Me Something Good”, written by Stevie Wonder for Chaka Khan). There is no shortage of atmospheric songs
such as “So Close” and “The Bed I Made”, which closes the album on refined nocturnal atmospheres accentuated by an essential piano.

Carlo Boccadoro, composer and conductor, was born in Macerata in 1963. He lives and works in Milan. He collaborates with soloists and orchestras in different parts of the world. He is the author of numerous books on musical topics.

This text is taken from “Lunario della musica: A record for every day of the year” published by Einaudi, courtesy of the author and the publisher.