The Hottest New Group in Jazz
This 2-CD anthology takes its title from the debut for a vocal trio that  lived up to it: Lambert, Hendricks & Ross wove its magic from two men and a  woman ready to push jazz vocals to a post-bop frontier built on the vocalese of  Ella Fitzgerald and Eddie Jefferson (the spark behind King Pleasure's epochal  transformation of jazz solos into sung lines) and fueled by a bumper crop of  great instrumentals on which to build their songs. Arrangements meticulously  follow the styles of specific soloists, inject healthy dollops of humor, and  interact wonderfully with the accompanists, approximating the intimate scale and  high-flying interplay of the small groups that dominated '50s and early '60s  jazz. This is vivid, effortlessly swinging, deliriously cool jazz that will  sound as good to loungearrivistesas it will to seasoned jazz hounds,  and this intelligently compiled distillation of their first few albums gets  extra credit for exemplary sound and annotation.--Sam Sutherland