True to Life

On their seventh album, True to Life, the Chenille Sisters sound like the Roches more than ever. Like their models, the Chenilles (Cheryl Dawdy, Connie Huber, and Grace Morand of Ann Arbor, Michigan) sing a mix of comic and serious material in a spirited blend of '40s-pop and '60s-folk vocal harmonies. The production by Darleen Wilson (Bill Morrissey, Patty Larkin), and the singing are both top-notch, but what ultimately sinks this album is the half-hearted nature of the material. The serious songs are more sentimental than provocative, and the comic songs are more smug than irreverent. Dawdy's "I Lie in the Dark," for example, means to be a brave, child's-eye view of fighting parents, but its thoroughly conventional comments make it sound like a Tammy Wynette single with less melody and a more sluggish rhythm. "Help! I'm Turning into My Parents" tries hard to be an irreverent send-up of the aging baby-boomer generation, but you can see the ancient punchlines coming from so far away that they make no impact when they finally arrive. Huber's "Pizza Deliverance," a send-up of tabloid religious miracles, and Morand's "Love of Your Life," a skeptical look at love and marriage, fall similarly flat. --Geoffrey Himes