THE NEVILLE BROTHERS “Yellow Moon.” A&M; ***...

THE NEVILLE BROTHERS “Yellow Moon.” A&M; *** 1/2

Deeply religious and unabashedly political. Pulsatingly polyrhythmic and righteously sung. If you don’t already own an album by this wild bunch of semi-legendary New Orleans siblings, this Daniel Lanois-produced effort not only provides a suitable sampler of the pan-cultural Afro-Caribbean gumbo groove thang upon which the group has built its formidable live reputation, but also contains such message-laden showcases for Aaron Neville’s gossamer, hearts a-flutter tenor as Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” and Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side.”

The rap-inflected black history lesson “Sister Rosa” and the harmonic Nevillization of A.P. Carter’s white gospel standard “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” are successful departures from the group’s form/norm, but the best moments come during a bone-chilling slide-guitar-and-hand-percussion arrangement of Dylan’s “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” that conjures up all the bad ju-jus inherent in this grimmest of grim story lines. Would that the rest of this record were as unconventional--by Nevilles’ standards, that is.