** The Neville Brothers

VALENCE STREET

(Columbia)

You know something's gone wrong when the best song on a Neville Brothers album is "If I Had a Hammer." The Peter, Paul and Mary chestnut gets a thorough reworking in the vein of the two Dylan covers on their best album, Yellow Moon -- the band percolate for six minutes amid swampy slide guitars, Cyril's testifying, and Aaron's soaring falsetto. But the brothers' quality control breaks down on the rest of the disc.

Seven ballads on a 12-song album is too many, especially when a couple are flat-out weak and others are oddly arranged -- notably Cyril's "Utterly Beloved," done as late-'70s leisure-suit soul. Their collaboration with Wyclef Jean, "Mona Lisa," is pointlessly repeated from Jean's year-old Carnival album, and its light trip-hop groove doesn't fit here. Charles's token jazz instrumental is placed too early in the disc. And Art's deep voice is a mismatch for Richard Thompson's "Dimming of the Day," which should have gone to Aaron. Only three of the remaining tracks qualify as vintage Nevilles: "Give Me a Reason" is a solid if typical Aaron ballad, and "Over Africa" and Art's Meters-style "Real Funk" both feature the New Orleans second-line rhythms sorely missing from the rest of the disc. But even these songs feel like previews of solo projects rather than integral parts of a unified statement. And nothing here comes close to reaching the peaks of their live shows.

-- Brett Milano