REVIEW: Bonnie Raitt, Fundamental (Capitol)
- Tracey Bleile
In a twist on the "old dog learns new trick" cliche, Bonnie Raitt's newest effort Fundamental has Bonnie and her co-producers, Latin Playboy/honorary Los Lobos members Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake blending the best of what they know to create great musical synergy. Throw in the extremely good taste to round up members of Los Lobos and NRBQ as a backing band (who also contributed original songs for Raitt) and it's Super Dirty Blues with a serious head of steam.
How refreshing and ironic that the signature keyboard-happy/ deep bottom end/noisy brass of Froom's experimentation that got used to excess in Los Lobos' Colossal Head serves here instead to gently frame and not overwhelm Raitt's rusty-blade-dipped-in-honey voice. Raitt's signature twang and squeal bottle slide blues guitar becomes part of the picture without having to dominate the scene, and the many different sounds produced are definitely going to give guitar aficionados a thrill. This hybrid of raunch and orchestral arrangement is definitely going to give mainstream listeners a pleasurable kick in the pants, period.
Bonnie seems to relish more than ever that she is a rare creature - a female blues artist whose paid her dues, and proves she deserves to be where she is by infinitely expansion of her range any way chooses. Even on the more trademark straight-ahead blues Raitt plays on "Spit Of Love", she sounds more free, and lyrically this album has some of the raciest lyrics since "Slow Ride". She's sad, she's sassy, she's lounge-y. Thanks to her long-time friend John Hiatt (who seems to have a never-ending wellspring of songs that sound so good on her) she's even ultra-torchy on "Lovers Will".
And because she is an old pro, she deftly throws in those couple of songs that will get all the airplay they can muster, just 'cause they're bouncy and cool and you can belt out the chorus with her, and you know you wanna when you hear that long flowing guitar wail intro. She neatly delivers unto us just such a pop/blues crossover with "Blue For No Reason". There are a couple of times the music doesn't feel like original Raitt, as in a calypso-flavored number echoing of Blondie (read "Tide Is High"), right down to the spoken word break, but even that can't detract from the overall flow.
At the end, "One Belief Away" closes with an all-out Latino flair (courtesy of The Texicali Horns doing up the mariachi sound) that fades off with Raitt playing an almost Hawaiian guitar flourish. Makes you glad that a true professional knows when and how to roam into amateur territory.
