NEW RELEASES : In Brief

* 1/2 Tom Scott, “Keep This Love Alive,” GRP Records. It’s hard to understand why Scott bothered to put his name on this album. Five of the nine tracks are largely dominated by the pedestrian vocals of, among others, Brenda Russell, David Pack and Diane Schuur. Scott’s saxophone on instrumental originals like “Miz Thang” and “Givin’ Our Best” is predictably funky. But there is almost no evidence of the originality that, one hopes, is still present beneath Scott’s contemporary gloss.

Albums are rated on a scale of one asterisk (poor) to five (a classic).