Credit producer Richard Perry for building an album around Leo Sayer's strongest asset, his voice, rather than catering to his poor little Pierrot sensibility. On Endless Flight, Sayer's fourth album, his sweet and sour tenor finally emerges as one of the most dynamic voices in rock, beside which Elton John and David Bowie, who also owe a great deal to the English music hall, emit the warmth of icebergs. Though Sayer has usually worked for a pathos rooted in his own dreamily schizoid song lyrics, Endless Flight is an exuberant album of dance music that throws in a couple of ballads for a change of pace. The hit, "You Make Me Feel like Dancing," one of five Sayer collaborations, typifies the album's spirit of goofy disco-pop which has as its goal fun, not edification.

Among the outside tunes, Sayer's revival of Holland-Dozier-Holland's "Reflections" is even more exciting than the Supremes' original version; his poignant rendition of Danny O'Keefe's "Magdalena" spotlights a song that deserves to be a standard. The rhythm tracks of Perry's production point up the revolution in pop created by disco with such animation that Endless Flight could easily end up becoming the party album for the holiday season. If its pleasures don't run very deep, at least they burn hot. (RS 231)

STEPHEN HOLDEN