Warner Bros.

The Glow came out during Raitt's career dark days — its straightforward blues-rock was anathema in the punk-vs.-disco late '70s. But Raitt's voice — the sublime sound of yearning and heartbreak — resonates with youthful verve and her slide work is slinky as all get-out. The torchy title ballad is simply one of the best songs of her career.

This article appears in Sep 6-12, 2006.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...