Marti Jones's 1985 debut, 'Unsophisticated Time,' was an out-of-left-field stunner. With Jones's sultry singing, Don Dixon's subtle production and the pair's ultrasmart song selection, the album came off as a hip update of Dusty Springfield's Dusty in Memphis – maybe it would have sold better if they'd called it Marti in Charlotte. But this brilliant, eclectic pop record couldn't find a home on the radio, so with Match Game the Jones-Dixon team faced the difficult task of making a deserving follow-up that might actually get heard.

Match Game works best when it recreates the offbeat gutsiness of Unsophisticated Time. Liam Sternberg's "Crusher" is an unexpected, lyrical gem that gives Jones a chance to flex her muscles as an interpreter, and Elvis Costello's "Just a Memory" is a lost classic that deserves to become a standard – Jones's country-tinged version (with Elvis associate T Bone Burnett guesting on vibrato guitar) gives the song the sort of delicate reading it requires. Don Dixon's own "Touch Tone" is a strangely warm bit of synth pop that's reminiscent of some of Unsophisticated Times's more forward-looking moments.

The album ends with three surprising covers. John David's bubblegummy "It's Too Late" should have been a hit back when the Searchers recorded it in the late Seventies, and with this version it gets a strong second chance. Free's "Soon I Will Be Gone" (quick, name another female singer who'd touch an old Free album track in 1986) offers Jones a chance to do some heavy emoting alongside an "Eleanor Rigby"-like string quartet. Finally, Jones makes good on her risky decision to tamper with an FM classic like David Bowie's Ziggy-era "Soul Love."

Not all the song selections on Match Game are quite so inspired. Covering a Marshall Crenshaw tune, for instance, makes plenty of sense, since Crenshaw and Jones share a certain romantic, revivalist spirit. But why not choose something less obvious than "Whenever You're on My Mind," which Jones gives a slightly perfunctory reading? And while Reed Nielsen's "We're Doing Alright" is an eminently catchy midtempo number, it sounds as though Jones is straining just a bit to appeal to the great unwashed Pat Benatar crowd. Jones is too good a vocalist to waste time slumming with her inferiors.

Match Game, then, is a fine album from a great singer. The only qualification is that on a number of tracks both Jones and Dixon sound like they're trying too hard to come up with something timely and mainstream. Their problem isn't that they aren't smart enough to make standard-issue, mass-market pap; it's that they're too smart to aim so low. (RS 485)

DAVID WILD