darlings are often the public's scorn, that the sisters' strategy—part confrontation, part playing the klutz—was lousy. I could have saved myself the trouble. The Roches finished their first number to catcalls and a giggle or two, their last to a standing ovation—defying all logic and most expectation. Their album does the same.
The Roches is a collection of snapshots, some of them taken with a telephoto lens. There's "Mr. Sellack," in which a formerly confident artiste asks for her old (dreary, low-paid, steady) job back: "Waiting tables ain't that bad/Since I've seen you last, I've waited for some things that you would not believe/To come true." Or "The Troubles," in which somewhat more successful artists now about to travel weigh the pros ("We're going away to Ireland"), cons ("I hope they have health food in Dublin") and mixed blessings of embarkation ("We're leaving behind our boyfriends soon"). The Roches toss off that last line jauntily enough to suggest, with a wicked gleam, that it's more of a blessing than a mix. But by the final verse, the sisters have made the song—oh, perfect—into a round: anticipation turns into anxiety and then back into anticipation again.
Any similarity between characters in the songs and persons living is not coincidental. The singers are admirably quick with an accent or intonation: the crisp diction of fathers and mothers busy knowing best, the too-careful phrasing of husbands who should know better (but who fool around just the same). There are observations that women in particular can say right-on to—dumb but true flashes, like the way pocketbooks are impossible to manage if you're carrying anything else. Whether it's commuter-train seats or pop-music categories, the Roches don't fit easily into life's assigned slots. But then, who does? Their wryme style of beleaguered domestic reportage—a triptych of hipper, loonier Erma Bombecks—appeals to the misfit in all of us.
Appropriately enough, The Roches has been produced (by Robert Fripp) in what the label calls audio vérité—a truer phrase than high fidelity to describe the grainy texture of the voices caught here and enlarged. Maggie's grave and unexpected baritone, Suzzy's sweet and sour chatter, and Terre's upper register, mysteriously built of husks and reeds, are grouped together against a stark background where
