** Pizzicato Five

HAPPY END OF THE WORLD

(Matador)

Pizzicato Five are from Japan, but their pop pastiche could easily come from London or New York, or anyplace where the stylish go to dance and parade their self-conscious irony. This is P5's third American release. Although the first two were greatest-hits compilations culled from P5's 20-odd Japanese releases, Happy is composed of brand-new numbers. That might explain why a good portion of it is pointless, a bag of knickknacks that one second sounds like some game show from 30 years ago and the next is all plastic exuberance and vapid choruses of "Ba ba ba ba ba ba . . . "

The songs that work best don't wander back in time, or get all hung up on cutesy-kitsch hipness; they're fixated more on simple dance-floor pleasures than on attitude or gimmickry. At such moments singer Maki Nomiya's flat surface of a voice is easier to ignore, and it's easier to forgive P5 leader/DJ Yasuharu Konishi his desire to create music of unwavering shallowness. He chose Maki first for her moody-model looks, then for the way her voice is the perfect expression of nothing. Sometimes the distance between the clever and the bothersome is too small to travel.

-- Amy Finch