Tight Rope (Arista) (1999)

B&D's party-and-pain formula is way too predictable by album No. 6: ''Beer Thirty'' sounds like a rewrite of ''Boot Scootin' Boogie'' and songs like ''Texas and Norma Jean'' — which recalls an encounter with Marilyn Monroe — strain credibility. But when Ronnie Dunn launches into his three-minute soliloquies on relationships gone wrong (most effectively on a remake of John Waite's ''Missing You''), the world slows to the tempo of tears. B