Wilson Phillips's brutally catchy 1990 debut spawned widespread scoffing that the girls weren't much credit to their genes (the group consists of Michelle and John Phillips's daughtér Chynna and Brian Wilson's daughters Carnie and Wendy). If Shadows and Light is the "mature" Wilson Phillips record – and it is – then nurture has clearly won out over nature. Sure, the girls' vocals are clean and bright, just like their parents'. Yes, they can write songs, inasmuch as the words rhyme. But their work can't reinvent the fantasies of Sixties California pop; what they know are the lives of pretty, polished inheritors of that legend. Their music is riddled with flaws – teenage-diary prose, an incessant pinging keyboard, squeaky singing reminiscent of the Chipmunks – but dishonest it isn't. Their pampered, dysfunctional upbringings may seem like pop-heiress triviality to everyone else, but it's plenty real to them.

Shadows and Light retains the group's trademark vocal blends – for both better and worse – but overall the album's sound is meatier (horns! strings!) and the subject matter genuinely introspective. Aside from the pleasantly spunky radio fodder – the percolating "Give It Up," the prom-perfect "This Doesn't Have to Be Love," the gutsy breakup song "Don't Take Me Down" – Shadows and Light's best moments are its most difficult ones. In the Wilsons' aching "Flesh and Blood," written for their strange, estranged father, the girls unapologetically proclaim their distance ("For years I've been following your case," they sing – so much for sentiment) and their anger. Chynna's "All the Way From New York," for her father, is nicely levelheaded, evenly mingling resentment with forgiveness.

Wilson Phillips's worst sin is an utter lack of irony, which is skin-crawlingly highlighted on "Goodbye, Carmen." This maudlin paean to the hard-working Latino servants who changed the kids' diapers while Dad was backstage partying could have been a window into the singularly Californian nature of the singers' fucked-up affluence. But the girls' own ingenuousness trips them up: Performers who can write a friendly love song to their maid have got to stop wondering why fans never exclaim, "They're singing about me!" (RS 634/635)

ARION BERGER