THE TROUBLE DOLLS
Sticky
Half a Cow Records

FULL DISCLOSURE ALERT: In 1999, I wrote an entirely fictitious bio for this band, which is available in a slightly altered form on their Web site. Also, I went out a few times with a member of the group (during my pre-Christian era) and still think he's cute.

Back in 1988, a man in his 30s was trying to explain to me why the Bangles were such a revelation to him and his peers.

"When the Beatles first came on the scene," he said, "girls went crazy over them not just because they played great music, but because they were sexy," he said. "Guys never had a band like that."

I'm reminded of that as I listen to this, the first album by New York's Trouble Dolls. Not that it's overtly Beatlesque—the Fabs exist here more as what journalists call "deep background"—but because of the excitement of hearing Cherie Leone's remarkable voice over such beautiful, pure pop music. Fifteen years after the Bangles, there are still practically no women with outstanding, songbird voices—distaff equivalents of Lennon or McCartney—directing their talents towards unabashedly melodic rock and roll.

Leone's gorgeous yet utterly unaffected singing, bringing to mind Christine McVie after having her boyfriend stolen by Debbie Harry, is perfect for the Trouble Dolls' sound, which is likewise different from anything else around.

The tracks on Sticky, penned mostly by guitarist Matty Karas, are split radically between new-wave bubblegum rockers and haunting ballads—the latter showing considerable depth. The minimalist production of "Marcelle," for example, projects Leone's vulnerable vocals over a haunting, circular guitar riff that finds the middle ground between the Airplane's "White Rabbit," Ravel's "Bolero," and the Beatles' "I Want to Tell You."

The one track on the album that straddles the fence between bounciness and despair happens to be the best. "I Don't Know Anything at All" is one of those number-one hits in my universe that would probably be a well-played album track in the real world. I say that because I know that radio programmers judge hits by bang-on openings, whereas this song has the opposite—an inexorable pull. Instead of mallet-like punches, it's punctuated by ever-growing emotional waves. Back in the days of the great ballads—the Association's "Cherish"; the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling"; or a more apt comparison, the Bee Gees' "World," this technique was known as a "build." Very few artists can achieve it nowadays.

"I Don't Know Anything at All" draws me in with its "Eve of Destruction"-style opening, and then utterly hooks me with Leone's plaintive, "I stay at home alone at night..." I must have listened to this song a total of 50 times and it still ends before it can wear out its welcome.

The new-wave bubblegum tracks contain some of the irony familiar in twee-pop acts (I could do without Leone's disrupting the flowery "Your Love Is the Sunshine" with a Bon Scott imitation), but they still betray a sincere love of the genre. The best of them, "I Finally Figured Out," with its Raindrops-style male/female vocal switchoffs, modernizes the Brill Building sound with an exuberance that hasn't been heard since Blondie covered the Shangri-Las' "Out in the Streets."