**1/2 The Softies

WINTER PAGEANT

(K)

Two guitars -- one gently strummed, the other softly plucking rudimentary melodic patterns -- and two artless female voices in homemade harmony provided the skeletal framework for 1995's It's Love (K). Applied to songs that dealt plainly in the classic confessional theme of romance come and gone, it seemed a refreshing, even promising response to the impersonal churn of, say, the latest single from Alice in Chains or Stone Temple Pilots.

On Winter Pageant, the Portland (Oregon) duo of Rose Melberg and Jen Sbragia don't venture far from It's Love, which is too bad. "The Best Days" is as sweet and poetic a reflection on the rush of falling in love as you could ask for; "My Foolish Way" is a wonderfully disarming and revealing anatomy of a courtship. But the inflection of the voices on the plaintive "So Sad" and the hopeful "Excellent" is almost identical, even though one ends with the line "I can't help you and you can't help me" and the other with "It's much too good to be real/I can't believe it's real but it's true." That lack of dynamics engulfs too many of the disc's melodies and moods; it makes me wonder whether the Softies couldn't use a little shot of the raucous pop energy Melberg saves for her other band, the punkish trio Go Sailor.

-- Matt Ashare

(The Softies play upstairs at the Middle East this Sunday, March 30.)