*** Nancy Wilson

LIVE AT McCABE'S GUITAR SHOP

(Epic)

Are there enough diehard Heart fans left to justify an acoustic solo album by one of the two frontwomen? Recorded at a tiny Los Angeles club, this informal set includes new songs, cover tunes, and only a couple of Heart oldies. It's less a commercial effort than a warm fuzzy for old Heart fans who absorbed the first two albums in high school.

To her credit, sister Nancy Wilson (the thinner, blonder one) sounds as if she'd never left that era, handling Simon & Garfunkel's "Kathy's Song" and Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You" with the same winsome sensitivity that the best coffeehouse folksingers did in the '70s. Done in the same earnest style, Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" is more touching than one might expect. Only one track, "These Dreams," recalls Heart's brief stint as a streamlined '80s hit machine. It benefits from a lighter touch here, as does the older Heart hit "Even It Up" -- originally a sexual-equality anthem, now a pretty good come-hither song. Like every good Heart ballad, the mandolin-led "Half Moon" is basically Led Zep's "Battle of Evermore" with different words. Another new song, "Everything," has the kind of lyric no grown-up should try getting away with -- "My desire is to die where the ocean meets the fire" -- but even that sounds reassuring.

-- Brett Milano