Pizzicato Five

Matador

If, simultaneously, you could be super pop, ridiculously retro and mind-numbingly innovative, could avoid being gimmicky or overly artsy, and instead could come off as wonderfully sincere and perfectly artsy, what would you be? Pizzicato Five! This set of 14 dazzling new tracks includes typically catchy P5 dance songs (“A Room With a View,” “A Perfect World”) and several cuts that dare to be particularly un-dancey (“Roma,” “Loudland”), allowing for amazing experimentation by producer/composer/lyricist Konishi Yasuharu. His lyrics (in Japanese; an accompanying booklet contains translations) are not unlike Brian Wilson’s—sweet and honest as your first love, and sometimes as silly. Yasuharu’s naïveté seems only slightly more intentional, and at times it’s just good clean fun: “20th Century Girl” is about an old fashioned girl who goes in for such archaic things as junk food, groovy records and TV.