This is the debut album of Montreal-born sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle, who have provided Maria Muldaur and Linda Ronstadt with some of their best material. An original crossbreeding of folk, blues and other early popular song styles, the album marks them as traditionalists of the first order. Both sisters write striking, elemental tunes whose plainness is underscored by their unaffected singing and by Joe Boyd's and Greg Prestopino's economical coproduction. Not since Carole King's Tapestry has the female voice been recorded with such unblemished intimacy.

The McGarrigles' only slightly dissimilar voices, though high and thin, are charming, and the primness of their phrasing lends their material introspective fervor. It is easy to imagine some of these performances taking place in a New England parlor at the turn of the century. Instead of professional backup musicians, an old piano would have sufficed, with no great loss of intensity.

Although these songs sound like unreconstructed period pieces, so many influences are involved that it's impossible to trace their origins. Chief among them are traditional church music and French - Canadian folk (Anna's lovely "Complainte pour Ste-Catherine," coauthored with Phillipe Tatartcheff, is sung in French), though ideas from spirituals and early jazz also come into play. As a result, the best tunes boast a timelessness against which the McGarrigles' sentimental and whimsical lyrics assume an Emily Dickinson-like austerity. Though Kate's "Tell My Sister" and "(Talk to Me of) Mendocino" take their harmonic cues from the hymnal, their subject isn't religion, but romance. Because they carry no strong sexual overtones, they imply an uncommonly puritanical sensibility. This sense of reserved, private passion runs throughout the album and gives the McGarrigles an aura of mystery.

The McGarrigles' reverence for tradition is also evidenced by their fondness for simple waltzes. The most affecting waltz, Kate's "Go Leave," is sung accompanied by a single acoustic guitar. A despairing plea for a lover not to abandon her, the cut is the purest example of the McGarrigles' aesthetic goal: the distillation of sentiment into a form so classically simple it resists stylistic identification and psychological scrutiny.

Though these arrangements sound deceptively informal, they couldn't be done much differently without undercutting the emotional nuances of the vocals. The only song with a full rhythm track is Kate's upbeat "Kiss and Say Goodbye" which leads off with a marching rhythm, then skips into modified Dixieland. Her seamless "Blues in D" is likewise an exercise in austerity—memorable and desolate.

The most "produced" song is Anna's "Heart like a Wheel." Where Linda Ronstadt made it into a throbbing arctic lament, the McGarrigles emphasize its fragile and obsessive aspects. Different words in one verse accentuate the song's suicidal despair, while the ingeniously overdubbed voices evoke the needle prick of a spinning wheel. In the McGarrigles' hands, "Heart like a Wheel" becomes not just a great tearjerker but a litany of pure grief.

Ultimately, Kate and Anna McGarrigle is easier to admire than it is to love. Its classicism provides its protagonists impenetrable psychological protection. It is the only album I can think of in which total innocence and total sophistication seem to coincide. (RS 207)

STEPHEN HOLDEN