TV REVIEWS : Arrested Development on MTV: Instant Revisionism

Most pop acts do “MTV Unplugged” as a career retrospective. But Arrested Development--the most favored new artist of 1992--is doing a whole hour based solely around its debut album, and issuing a soundtrack to the show as its second release, no less.

The presumption of prematurity surrounding the project turns out to be unwarranted, though: A.D.’s “Unplugged” (premiering at 10 tonight on MTV) is a delightful exercise in instant revisionism.

MTV obviously thought it had something special on its hands, having sneak-previewed a half-hour cut of the show a few months back in advance of tonight’s full edition, and the network was right.

Arrested Development is inherently well-suited to providing a visually arresting show, even--or especially--in this presumably toned-down setting, for while the music may be slightly quieter without the computer sampling, a non-unpluggable element like the frenetic choreography of female dancer Montsho Eshe comes off even more engagingly chaotic in this less loud context.

If anything, much of Arrested Development’s “3 Years, 5 Months and Two Days in the Life Of . . . “ album sounds even better rethought. As often happens on the show, not everything is “unplugged”--there’s a funky electric rhythm guitar from time to time, and Headliner’s turntable is presumably in proximity to an AC outlet. But the backing band’s emphasis is acoustic bass and live drums, which takes the flavor a step back from hip-hop toward what group leader Speech describes as “Southern-fried funk.”

One tune, “Mr. Wendal,” has turned into a gentle acoustic ballad, but the remaining tunes, ironically, become even more danceable with the rhythm section on hand. Speech has succeeded in his goal of making the music sound more traditionally “African” even as he drives it closer to just classic R&B.;