Like the Bee Gees' hits from Saturday Night Fever, Shadow Dancing's three outstanding songs–coproduced and cowritten by Andy Gibb's older brother Barry–transcend banality through the sheer beauty of their chiffon-and-whipped-cream settings. "Shadow Dancing" plays out its theme by leapfrogging melodic phrases in a gorgeous array of textures over a light funk rhythm. "(Our Love) Don't Throw It All Away" elaborates its hook into a cloud castle of strings and feathery voices laced with falsetto. "Why" builds angelic choirs on a subtle, Cuban-flavored disco beat.

The rest of the album consists of simpler pop-rock tunes, most of them written by the singer, that echo the sugary style of the predisco Bee Gees. In the family tradition, Andy Gibb combines solid tunefulness with elementary lyrics and a voice that throbs with a somewhat mechanized ethereality. Though his own songs mark a pleasant improvement over the mannered country-pop of last year's Flowing Rivers, they're no match for the aforementioned three magical cuts. For the success of the Bee Gees' pop-disco sound–which has actually become a minigenre–depends entirely upon a surface appeal in which production values, even more than melody, are the key. When it works, there's nothing like it. You have to go back to Glenn Miller ballads and Forties Frank Sinatra for pop music that conjures up a glamour this celestial. (RS 272)

STEPHEN HOLDEN