Kate and Anna McGarrigle

The secret message of this family get-together, which literalizes the well-tended domesticity underlying every record they've made, is that self-expression is for kids. Let Rufus and Martha confess and emote, and sure, jolly Uncle Chaim into going public with that lonely tune of his--it's so modest it'll fit right in. Because what the grown-ups in charge are after is songs per se, songs of every provenance and orientation. Berlin and Porter and Foster at their most quiet and obscure, folk songs from hither and yon, that hootenanny refrain they were once so sick of, good old "Young Love." Loudon has no choice but to sing his heart out for once, and Linda is so peripheral she wonders why she dropped in. By the time Martha hits that impossible high note on a slow-dance finale originally cribbed from Schubert and Liszt for Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1931, we know she's not putting Mom and Dad on notice. She's just loving the song, loving the song. (Grade - A-)