Manhattan Transfer - Mecc CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

of which still makes for some pretty hip pop music: the tricky tempo in "On the Boulevard" is a lot faster than it seems (you start out walking and suddenly realize you've been running for some time), and the lovey-dovey incantation at the heart of "Smile Again" is eventually irresistible, if a shade too obviously derivative of Earth, Wind and Fire's "After the Love Has Gone."

But this homogenization creates a cooler, more sterile kind of jazz than the Manhattan Transfer at their best. Eddie Jefferson's lyrical tribute to Charlie Parker, "(The Word of) Confirmation," sounds strangely saccharine sung in tempered four-part harmony, unlike the moving tribute to Jefferson himself, "Body and Soul," on the group's last LP, Extensions. Such lapses are distressing because there are so few ensembles attempting vocal jazz these days.

"Kafka" is a nice bit of wordless vocalizing, and Mecca for Moderns ends with Gene Puerling's gorgeous a cappella arrangement of "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," an all-too-brief burst of harmonysteria. Yet I wonder if the group wouldn't be better off camping it up a bit more. After all, who are the Manhattan Transfer without attitude? (RS 356)

DON SHEWEY