Sound Check — Geoff Carter: Latest Pizzicato release a high Five

Friday, Dec. 22, 2000 | 9:53 a.m.

Geoff Carter music column appears Fridays in the Sun. Reach him at geoff.carter@vegas.com or992-7936.

"Please enjoy the stereo action fully that will surprise you," advises Pizzicato Five, in the liner notes to the group's 1997 release "Happy End of the World." Mangled English aside, I did enjoy it, and Pizzicato Five continues to surprise me.

The Tokyo-based band is the king of its sub-genre, an alliance of 1960s pop sensibilities and current dance beats called "Shibuya-Kei" -- the sound of Tokyo's glitzy Shibuya District. Basically, if you've ever wondered what would happen if Burt Bacharach were to apply his songwriting style to deconstructionist pop techno -- and he found a Japanese woman to sing the lyrics in her native tongue -- Pizzicato Five provides the answer in full, glorious stereo.

The band's fifth U.S. release, unfortunately titled "The Fifth Release from Matador" (Matador Records is the band's U.S. label), plays to all the band's strengths. Singer Maki Nomiya has seldom been in better form; her flirty vocal dips, swings and soars through composer/arranger Yasuharu Konishi's crazy pop collage like a kid on a snowboard. It's a pure delight to hear Nomiya careening through the happy house beats of "Darlin' of Discotheque" and "Tout, Tout Pour Ma Cherie," better still to savor her sensual sway in "Room Service" and "Wild Strawberries." Even when Konishi leads her through a rare bad step -- as he does on the ham-fisted rocker "LOUDLAND!" -- Nomiya maintains an unshakable equilibrium. She won't be felled from those six-inch heels.

Konishi, meanwhile, loads "Fifth Release" with enough sonic slaps, stereo dynamics and sweet melody to make the record feel like a theme park. Don't be misled by the repeated sample that declares, "This recording is a collection of unintended indiscretions ..."; Konishi has built a monster and he knows it. The rolling piano and drums of "Roma" borrows heavily against Raymond Scott; "A Perfect World" tips its wide-brimmed hat to Mary Wilson ... it's impossible to make something that sounds so loose, so carefree and not have slaved over it like a mad scientist.

Pizzicato Five has never been a groundbreaking act, but it's always been a steady one. "The Fifth Release from Matador" does what it's supposed to -- it evokes a young, attractive girl walking through the Tokyo streets, happy and undaunted even as the ground beneath her ripples and shifts.