Three Singers in Search of a Voice

* 1/2

WILSON PHILLIPS

“Shadows and Light”

SBK It’s easy not to like Wilson Phillips without ever hearing a note of its music. Fair or not, three attractive young women with famous musical forebears and who rarely play their own instruments or write songs without outside help would have to create a truly magnificent work of art to be taken seriously.

Well, maybe the trio likes appealing to the lowest common denominator. “Shadows and Light” is the musical equivalent of one of those ubiquitous paintings of woebegone, big-eyed puppies: cheaply sentimental, grossly exaggerated and impersonally produced. Whoever first drew those puppies undeniably had some level of talent, and Carnie and Wendy Wilson and Chynna Phillips certainly sing and harmonize well, if at times cloyingly.

But the trio’s second album lacks the radio-friendly tunes the multi-platinum debut boasted, and one of its songs is downright offensive. “Flesh and Blood” obliquely exploits the well-publicized mental tribulations of the Wilson sisters’ estranged father, Beach Boy Brian, in the guise of a loving elegy. When the sound of waves hitting the beach ends the song, it’s all any listener can do not to hit the stop button.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).