POP MUSIC REVIEWS : The Brand New Heavies Party Down at the Palace

There’s a scene in “Crooklyn” in which Spike Lee’s early-’70s family dances along to the funky steps on TV’s “Soul Train.” Were that family to be transported two decades forward in time, the group they’d no doubt recognize and love best would be the Brand New Heavies, whose soul sound is neither heavy nor brand-new, but who still very effectively manage to shake the dust off the sucker.

The Palace was packed Tuesday with a sell-out crowd of evenly dispersed racial diversity, prompting one record exec to describe the throng as “very Benetton.” Anglophiles mixed freely with R&B; freaks and though leggy singer N’Dea Davenport hails from Atlanta, the three mod-ish blokes who make up the remainder of the core quartet (augmented live by six more players) are Brits. Even knowing that, it still seemed a shock the first time bassist Andrew Levy accentedly spoke up, so indigenously ours is their sound.

So leave it to the English to again feed us back what we’ve forgotten, and good. After keeping the sardines waiting an unaccountably long time, the Heavies arrived with a relatively-worth-the-wait 90-minute set firmly on the axis extending from James Brown staccato horn riffs) to War (wah-wah funk guitar) to Chic (good-timey disco) to fellow revivalists Lisa Stansfield and Soul II Soul.

Davenport’s athleticism was more celebratory than sultry, and the tight band harked back to a more carefree time of rampant trombone solos. If undeniably featherweight, this is the all-purpose party band of the moment.