7...

As silky as Mint Condition’s R&B hits are—and the group has had more than a dozen between 1991’s “Breakin’ My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes)” and 2008’s “Nothing Left to Say”—the St. Paul quintet has far more adventurous albums, accumulating an essential but overlooked catalogue of gorgeously played and harmonized alternative soul. (Listen to non-singles “Luxury Brown,” “Back And Forth,” and “Somethin’,” featuring Phonte from Little Brother, for a taste.) On the loose-fitting title track of 7... , the group’s seventh studio album, guest rapper K lists off the album titles almost as an intro course for the uninitiated, with changeling lead singer Stokley Williams quavering, “The cold Minnie Minnie rock on.”

Yet it’s unlikely the charming new single, “Caught My Eye,” will bring in Gayngs fans by the droves curious for more. With a synth-piano-vocal interplay as finely tuned as its chorus’ come-on—“Maybe soon I could treat ya / To somewhere quiet, no people. / Or maybe get to know ya / Over a chai or a mocha”—the track is humorously polite, like grown folks flirting. Much weirder is the crunchy, new jack, Prince-style synth-groove of “I Want It,” the organ-powered Al Green funk of “Ease The Pain,” and “Twenty Years Later,” the title of which promises its own band bio, but instead delivers a left-field, Broadway-esque number about a junkie living with his mom, rationalizing in the first person. Williams’ scatting never sounded more like the enjoyment of a band doing whatever the hell it wants—and getting away with it, too, because the pleasure is infectious.