Plumb

The Story began as a duo of two Amherst College friends, Jonatha Brooke and Jennifer Kimball, but it was Brooke who wrote the songs, set the vocal arrangements, and took most of the lead vocals. So it's not a complete surprise that Brooke broke with her partner after a dozen years and recorded this project as Jonatha Brooke & the Story, retaining husband/producer/keyboardist Alain Mallet and guitarist Duke Levine from the previous recordings. Unfortunately, the new format exposes the severe limitations of Brooke's voice, which is thin in tone and shrill in the upper register.

Plumb is dominated by songs of heartbreak and recrimination over a relationship that is over; they may or may not be about Kimball, but the bitterness of cuts such as "Nothing Sacred" and "Is This All?" emphasizes the prickliness of Brooke's singing. She needs a vocal partner to fill in the bare patches in her range and to lend some resonance to her lyric themes. The only vocal duet on "Plumb" pairs her with long-time admirer Bruce Cockburn on "War," and it's the album's most successful musical moment, even if the lyrics consist of rather predictable antiwar sarcasm. --Geoffrey Himes