*** New Edition

HOME AGAIN

(MCA)

With the help of some major production -- low-running beats syncopated about halfway between new jack and old funk -- the six Boston-born voices of New Edition snug themselves safely into the middle octaves to croon, talk, and rap their way back home again on this "reunion" CD. Home, that is, to easy-to-take songs that allow Bell, Bivins, DeVoe, Tresvant, Gill, and, yes, Whitney Houston's bad-boy husband to make their harmonies count. The group stay within themselves, softly sweet in "Tighten It Up" and "Something About You," suggestively tough in "Oh Yeah, It Feels So Good," gently suave in "Shop Around" and "How Do You Like Your Love Served" -- shifting from one combination of harmonies to another, conjuring up a complex tension as this or that one's solo vocal gently slides the story forward. As mellow as they ever were, the first post-funk harmony group to restore the tensely complex to masculine sexiness rediscover a lot of their long-lost soul.

-- Michael Freedberg