TOUGH CHICK COASTS

“NEVER ENOUGH.” Patty Smyth. Columbia. Motherhood has had a profound effect on female rockers as disparate as Chrissie Hynde and Pat Benatar, both of whom have written paeans to their children and loosened up on the sassiness long enough to develop “vulnerability” streaks a mile wide.

And what of tough chick Patty Smyth? Her daughter rates a 20-second a cappella coda at the end of the album, the rest of which is filled with business as usual: ham-fisted, vaguely romantic and all-purpose inspirational, sing-along, corporate rock.

This time she’s hooked up with the boys from the Hooters for production and co-writing credits, and though the formula remains much the same, the new team doesn’t quite have the proclivity for great-sounding guilty pleasures as her previous producer Mike Chapman.

With a couple of exceptions (the ambitious “Give It Time” and “The River Cried” are strong and unique enough to sound is if they’re on the wrong album), everything here is pretty well homogenized--even a version of Tom Waits’ achingly beautiful “Downtown Train.”

There’s something about the female voice, though--at least Smyth’s slightly raspy female voice--that makes this kind of generically produced and arranged song palatable.

Smyth can pull off the potentially embarrassing wronged-woman stuff precisely because she walks the fine line between sounding pouty and sounding like a biker lady who eats nails for breakfast. Someday, she may find a producer who makes her do more than just coast on those good instincts; until then, she has a firm grip on the short hairs of the AOR imagination.