In many ways, Dancer with Bruised Kness is a more confident effort than the McGarrigle sisters' first album. Their new songs prove they are as intelligent as any lyricists working today, though more frankly sensual, and their ear for melody and harmony remains extraordinary. And yet, something, perhaps the rush, is missing. Contemporary folk music's prima ballerinas have developed feet of clay. Still, the letdown was probably inevitable. Kate and Anna McGarrigle sparked a romance with the critics, many of whom named it among last year's ten best. But the critics' dazzled response seemed based not so much on the music as on what was potent and feminine in the women's songs and stance.

As personalities, the McGarrigle sisters are particularly attractive. They give off an air of rooted endurance as gently rugged, as wistfully strong, as the faded iron-fenced family graveyards still standing in Acadian clearings. At the same time, Anna and Kate's lyrics prove the sisters are both traveled and urbane. It's a heady combination which seemed to put it all together: wit and passion, folk music and popular song, lyric and melody, body and mind. Sisters, physically similar—on their first record their voices were indistinguishable from one another. What one lacked, the other supplied: the first was wife and mother, the second fancy-free. In their songwriting they emerged as individuals, yet Kate's irony and Anna's romanticism were two halves of the same circle. No wonder the pair seemed so admirably self-sufficient.

On Dancer with Bruised Knees, however, Kate and Anna no longer seem to be extensions of one another. Individual vocals are now credited—the first album's liner notes drew no distinction between lead and backup. Anna's vocals are throatier here, with a bit of vibrato thrown in so that she sounds at times like a north-woods Edith Piaf. But if the sisters have begun to pull in somewhat different directions, their songs have not suffered. "Firstborn Son" proves Kate's wit is sharper than ever. Her meditations span silver spoons, doting relatives and Moses himself, but her motherly pride is tempered with wry skepticism:

The firstborn son is always the one

The first to be called and the last to come

He's his mother's favorite, grandmother's too

He'll break their hearts and he'll break yours too.

And in the title song, Anna has further developed the kind of vivid, resonant imagery she used in "Heart like a Wheel." The dancer whose knees were bruised in a pas de deux is as much a metaphor as an actual character. Meanwhile, "Kitty Come Home" is so rich, brooding, almost lugubrious with its organ accompaniment, that it achieves a darker irony than Kate's gentle probes. Kitty is invited to "pack up all your children" and return to her family, or, as the last verse has it: "Come be our little seraph/In this paradise." So much loving protection makes "home" seem as airless as a locked room.

Although "Kitty Come Home" and "Firstborn Son" chafe a bit at family ties, the McGarrigle sisters' musical partnership is not merely a matter of convenience. The sheer joy they feel in singing together is still evident, particularly during the French folk songs, "Blanche Comme la Neige" and "Perrine Etait Servante." And yet both sisters' vocals are habitually pinched and sometimes shrill. Their singing is a limitation. (They often run out of breath and drop the ends of lines, so that important words are lost.) Their limitations, however, have worked to their advantage in the past.

In fact, the women's performance on Dancer with Bruised Knees—assured but somewhat heavy-handed—suggests that many of the transcendent moments on Kate and Anna McGarrigle were due to beginners' luck, better described as beginners' caution. Wary, lest their fragile voices, used to acoustic accompaniment, be overwhelmed, the sisters kept instruments severely in the background. Less timid now, the sisters have allowed instruments to be miked above whisper level, but Dancer with Bruised Knees often sounds blurry, the voices smothered in accompaniments.

Despite the new confidence, Dancer with Bruised Knees is not exactly an ambitious album. Neither the vocal nor instrumental settings are as adventurous as before, and their material seems less eclectic. Still, the spoken introduction to the title song, Kate's funny, bluesy drawl at the end of "Walking Song," and their inclusion of three French songs—two of which sound almost medieval—are all indications that the women are still willing to take risks. And though their second album is sometimes graceless and confused, occasionally listless, the dancers' bruised knees are probably only growing pains. (RS 238)

ARIEL SWARTLEY