NEW RELEASES

FOURPLAY

“Between the Sheets”

Warner Bros.

* 1/2

This is a big, soft marshmallow of a recording, all tease and no action, and a step down from Fourplay’s highly successful debut album of last year. Its warm, cuddly songs are the perfect background music for a yuppie Sunday.

Though all four headliners- leaders--Bob James (keyboards), Lee Ritenour (guitar), Nathan East (bass) and Harvey Mason (drums)--contribute compositions, the 11 selections seem like variations on a single, shallow theme with little real emotional content. A pair of vocal numbers, with guests Chaka Khan, Phil Perry and others, are particularly hollow.

You can’t help feel that talents are being wasted on this material. James enters each of his solos with promise, only to be cut off before he can develop his ideas. Ritenour is so smooth and glossy he’s plastic. Mason keeps time and little else. East is adequately firm, if not inventive; his melodic playing on Neal Hefti’s “Li’l Darlin’ ” makes the cut one of the few of interest here. Everything else is all show and no go. Even Mason’s “Song For Somalia” has no heart.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four (excellent).