Carly's songs on ["Spy"] show her at her tough-minded best, asking no quarter and offering none. Like her literary counterparts Mary McCarthy and Joan Didion, Carly Simon sees and allows herself to feel a great deal more than the average privileged, upper-middle-class young woman—probably much more than she'd like to. In We're So Close she offers a clear-eyed description of one of those strangely bloodless relation-ships so many people cling to these days…. [No] matter how much it may chill the marrow of sentimentalists or romantics, Carly Simon has the courage to tell it like it is.

She also has the courage to touch on something that's rarely discussed: violent female rage. Vengeance tells of a woman stopped by a policeman for a traffic violation; he uses his position of authority to molest her verbally with gross sexual innuendo, and finally she strikes back…. It's a strong...