Sister Seven Wrestling Over Tiny Matters (Arista)

Sister Seven

Wrestling Over Tiny Matters (Arista)

Reinvention? Maturation? Radiation? Opening with pure Garbage, "Fallen Angel," Wrestling Over Tiny Matters is not your mother's Little Sister. Having defined Austin's jam aesthetic over the better part of the Nineties, Sister Seven have just released their most accomplished album. Designed and engineered for radio, it of course stands little chance of true breakthrough in these conglomerate mass media times, but not because this veteran local act didn't win its own war of wills. Lean, trim, the songs all sound like they're 3:30 on the nose, even if they clock in at the five tantalizing minutes of "Elijah," guitarist Wayne Sutton's refracting guitar lines breaking into waves behind singer Patrice Pike's sultry feminine command. Explosive in classical FM mannerisms, nearly all 12 tunes are coiled tight enough to illicit a certain awe in the way they blossom with riffs, hooks, and choruses that sound like they've been lurking in your radio from the heyday of Janis Joplin through the era of the Wilson sisters and right up to the current age of Alanis. Only toward album's finish, "Kiss Me Baby," "Leave This Love Behind," and "Superman," does Pike's once pronounced drawl stretch out alongside the rhythmically elongated arrangements of this reformed Sixth Street all-night groove thang. By then, however, Wrestling Over Tiny Matters has won the match.