By their third studio album together, the Second Miles Davis Quintet — saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams — had basically established their style: a fleet, mercurial blend of hard bop, intricate melodies, and at times almost avant-garde rhythmic deconstruction. Sorcerer doesn’t break much ground, though, and as a result it’s probably the band’s most easily overlooked release. That doesn’t make it inessential; any group operating on this high a level never takes a real dump on record. But this is more of a holding action than the miracle that its predecessor, Miles Smiles, was. Plus, there’s one totally pointless track — but we’ll get to that.

The opening track, “Prince Of Darkness,” has one of the most hummable/memorable themes this band ever played. The band does their best to take it apart, with Tony Williams chopping the beat into tiny cubes and Wayne Shorter tossing the blues into a blender when it’s his turn at the microphone, but ultimately it’s just too powerful a hook to be denied, and every time it comes back around, you’ll find yourself wanting to sing the melody out loud. There are a couple of other really great pieces here — “Masqualero” in particular — but then there’s the weird, tacked-on coda, “Nothing Like You,” featuring a totally different band and vocalist Bob Dorough. This track was four years old, but for some reason Columbia thought it needed to be included on this record. It didn’t. It sucks. Just pretend it doesn’t exist.