Due to the busy schedules of Marcia Ball, Angela Strehli, Lou Ann Barton and producer Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack, Dreams Come True took five years to make. As testimony to its spontaneous vitality, the album sounds as if it had been cut in a day.

These three women – the first ladies of the Austin, Texas, rhythm & blues scene – are not coy or cool. They attack this collection of venerable R&B tunes and originals full bore, throats wide open and wailing. And if it occasionally seems like they're trying to muscle each other out of the way, that just makes the tunes kick all the harder.

None of the threesome had done much backup singing before the sessions for this album; as a result, their harmonies are rough-hewed, gritty and lustily imprecise. On the scorching opener, "A Fool in Love," the vocalists pass verses back and forth as if they were bottles of Jack Daniel's. Barton, whose whiskey-soaked pipes make her the meanest belter of the trio, struts out front to growl and snarl through raveups like "Good Rockin Daddy" and "Bad Thing," as well as a rumba-boogie take on Ike Turner's "I Idolize You."

Ball weighs in with three originals – the Southern-fried soul ballad "Love, Sweet Love," the stomping title tune and the swampy CD-only track "Snake Dance," which features steel guitar by the inimitable Jimmie Vaughan. Strehli, cofounder of the Antone's label, which is based in Austin, keeps the lowest profile, but her throaty presence is essential to the album's musical chemistry.

The songs are bolstered by classic R&B arrangements: sturdy drumming, sinewy bass lines, rolling piano, B-3 organ, taut rhythm guitar and horns that blast, chirp or wash smoothly over ballads. Ain't nothing fancy on Dreams Come True – just first-rate house-rockin' music. (RS 597)

ERIC SNIDER