The Roches

They're trying too hard. The title cut's all moue and double-take, you can hear Suzzy upstaging her big sisters, and Maggie's side-closers are so intense and compressed it's impossible to know what they mean, though for sure a more experienced poet wouldn't put so much weight on her metaphors (chocolate versus soybeans somehow getting us to boat people living--and no doubt sufferin'--in Suffern, whew). Nor does Paul Simon henchman Roy Halee channel them the way Robert Fripp might have. Even so these songs have an almost magical esprit; Maggie's "One Season" will be in their act when they're fifty. Nobody in pop music equals their intelligence or delight. But I hope they calm down some. (Grade: B)