Music Sunshine Girl

By JAY COCKS

So this is the music that a happy heart sings: love songs of wistfulness and tentative fulfillment, blues that take the full measure of a strong, worldly spirit. Bonnie Raitt's LUCK OF THE DRAW (Capitol), the follow-up to her breakthrough, breakaway 1989 album Nick of Time, had every right to be a record that took things for granted. All those Grammys, all those sales, after two decades of hard scuffling along the commercial fringe. She even, for Lord's sake, got married. Can anyone so blessed keep her edge? Easily. The tone of the new album is set by the superb title cut, a fleet bit of narrative songwriting by Paul Brady about a waitress who yearns to make it big as a Hollywood writer. Raitt gets the poignancy of the waitress's ambition, and its irony too: her dream of making it in Hollywood as a screenwriter is like a Grand Prix hopeful's dreaming of driving a radio cab. Raitt keeps that trim balance of wit, perspective and unforced compassion throughout. A singer who has made so much capital out of stormy weather could easily have lost her way in the sunshine. Raitt navigates in fine style to the far side of the silver lining. -- J.C.