Perhaps the finest recording of this quartet's illustrious career, Dreamland captures the Yellowjackets at the peak of their compositional and performing craft. This band has moved far beyond its peers with this release. The music here is simply intoxicating, full of gorgeous melodies, deceptively intricate changes, subtle rhythmic and harmonic nuances, and flawless playing.

Taking a cue from Weather Report (not to mention a percussionist, Alex Acuna), the Yellowjackets created more exotic textures for Four Corners, often with the use of Zawinul-like synthesizers from Russell Ferrante. The album otherwise represents a shift toward more traditional jazz, felt profoundly in the rhythm section of Jimmy Haslip and new drummer William Kennedy. The change in strategy is made plain on the opening "Out of Town," which finds everyone rethinking their instrument beyond the smooth jazz of Shades.

Out of print in the U.S.! Originally released in 1986, Shades was the cross-over Smooth Jazz band's fourth album overall. With guitarist Robben Ford's departure, the band displayed a slight Pop sensibility that enhanced their melodies and expanded their audience beyond the Jazz world.

Keyboardist Russell Ferrante chooses soft keyboard textures, the rhythm section of Haslip and Lawson keep things funky, and Russo’s saxophone comments on the action but doesn’t drive it the way he would on Shades. Otherwise, there’s not much that separates this Samba from their other moves: you have the crossover pop song (“Lonely Weekend”), intoxicating grooves (“Homecoming,” “Deat Beat”) and soulful, smooth jazz (“Daddy’s Gonna Miss You,” “Silverlake”). Since I’m naturally distrustful of jazz, I tend to watch a band that will slip a “Sylvania” and “Silverlake” onto the same album with a raised eyebrow.

Much of Mirage A Trois is similar to the debut album, but most notable is "Claire's Song", which would anticipate the future Yellowjackets with its sequencer and rhythmic elements. Ditto "Goin' Home", a slower, reflective tune and a concert favorite. "Nimbus" also predates the more complex compositions the group would create on later albums, expanding beyond the catch-all "fusion" genre.

The Yellowjackets made a splash with their first record, an accessible mixture of jazz, rock, and funk bearing the unmistakable mark of the L.A. session scene that spawned them. In fact, the Yellowjackets had their roots in the sessions for Robben Ford's 1979 album The Inside Story. Russell Ferrante, Jimmy Haslip, and Ricky Lawson all appeared on that album and reenlisted Ford's help for their own debut, with the guitarist's fluid soloing often taking the lead role.

Smooth jazz with some rough edges, you can actually sink your teeth into The Spin. Yellowjackets haven't completely taken pop/jazz out of their diet – Marc Russo's "Blues for Nikki" and Russell Ferrante's "Whistle While You Walk" will skip a little too lightly for some tastes – but most of the songs find a satisfying midway point between the sweet and the sour. "Geraldine," "Dark Horses," and "Storytellers" all have some meat on them, with keyboardist Russell Ferrante leading a musical discussion that steers clear of the banal. Leaving Russo to carry the melodies, Ferrante is free to pursue a more discursive dialogue (notably on "Enigma"), with punctuation provided by the brisk percussion of William Kennedy (who shines on "Dark Horses"). Jimmy Haslip's bassline gives "The Spin" its shape, but he continues to fade in and out of the mix, and fails to make the most of his one solo.

A nearly complete departure from smooth jazz, Politics is arguably the Yellowjackets' strongest effort to date. True, there is the pure pop of the single "Local Hero" (which features a rhythm section more rock than jazz) and the accessible "Evening Dance" to be considered, but they're the exceptions rather than the rule. Like Four Corners before it, Politics engages in exotic, dreamy textures, the new wrinkle here being the joining of Russell Ferrante's keyboards and Marc Russo's saxophones to create intoxicating, complex themes (the opening pair of "Oz" and "Tortoise & the Hare" are the best examples of this technique).