This Week's Hot CD: Bonnie Raitt's 'Souls Alike'
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 9/13/05
by Roberta Penn
Souls Alike (Capitol)
Though recorded before the New Orleans tragedy rose like a murky and polluted reflection of America's swamped political and social systems, "Souls Alike" is a melancholy and hopeful tribute to that musical mecca.
The CD also captures Raitt's roots appeal to pop audiences. The songs' lyrics are dressed in bittersweet and unrequited romances, but, like much of Raitt's music, they reveal universal realities.
"I Will Not Be Broken" is a pop declaration that the human spirit can not be quelled, "God Was in the Water" is a funky search for spiritual release, and "Trinkets" tells of how a child's small experiences, like listening to a Louis Armstrong record, converge to make a cosmos. Most of mankind would like to sing the chorus to the children of New Orleans, "Dance little children now. The whole round world is your neighborhood." (Roberta Penn)
GRADE: A
