Customer Reviews

Fifth Release From Matador

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The beauty of this album is how it jumps all around on the music scene. It blends the sounds together nicely. So what if they don't speak English! This album did everything right.

No one would ever guess that I'm a P5 fan, but yet I am. This CD, however, is not my favorite from this duo. Don't get me wrong it's not bad, just they have done better. It has the same happy happy joy joy sound as the others, but doesn't seem to have the cleverness behind it.

Pizzicato 5 are at their very best when they sound new and fresh. This recording is old and stale. There is nothing here that departs from what you've heard from them before with the exception of the tracks "20th Century Girl" (the one redeeming feature of this album) and "Tout, Tout Pour Ma Cherie" (an abysmal failure...). The remaining songs all sound like you've heard them many times before in superior versions.

Where "Happy End of The World" was a leap forward for P5, "The Fifth Release" is a step backwards. If you're looking to buy a P5 album, do yourself a favour and get one of the other ones.

I got my nephews hooked on Pizzicato Five three years ago after I discovered them myself, and whenever we travel together (which is a lot, as I babysit them often) they request this band's albums more than any other group besides The Beatles.

So as soon as I bought this brand new (as of this writing) release, my nephews got all excited--I put it on in the car, and as they heard it for the very first time their jaws dropped and asked me, "Do these guys ever make an album that DOESN'T sound great?"

Enough said.

Pizzicato Five is one of those rare musical acts who keep getting better and better with each album, who continue to persistently produce music that is nothing but outstanding, who are completely incapable of creating "filler" junk. And, like a lot of such acts, you can actually hear them developing on and expanding ideas from their previous projects--you can musically "connect the dots" here, so to speak, with the experimentation that occured on the previous album "Playboy & Playgirl" just as you can hear the connections between that earlier title and its own predecessor. Indeed, P5 don't appear to really be a pop band, really, so much as an ongoing music conceptual art project.

And after the particularly bad year we had in 2001... isn't it wonderful to have a band like this in the world who can create such wonderful joys in life for us all? P5 continue to remind everyone what is truly important in life. Thank God there is still at least one band around who still cares enough about people to do that.

I just love it. In fact I probably play this CD once a week (I do a lot of driving). If your are a Pizzacato 5 fan this is a must own CD. I must warn you, however, if you love the mindless repetitive sound on every radio station, this is not the group for you. But if you like music that actually required effort to make and is not played on the radio every 5 minutes then this is the CD for you. This sounds like nothing you'll hear on the commercial radio stations because the style is nothing like what is always aired on the stations. Rather, some songs are similar to progressive rock, some 80's pop, and some in a league all by themselves. You must be willing to have an open mind and see that just because they don't speak English, don't play it on the radio, and isn't like anything you normally hear.

They are tragically hip, unique, and more addicting the Colonel's 11 herbs and spices.

which Pizzicato gets us used to in their CD covers and booklets, the music here is an international combination of two hemispheres: brazilian jazzanova is representing a good act for miners everywhere, and p5 is exploiting it. And the perfected representation of lounge music that mancini never did is becoming a constante reference for p5 works, where sixties' fashy Europe draws constantly an 'imaginario' of something very post. Was that clear?

Pizzicato Five sound more polished and sophisticated with each album. This cd is my current favorite of their US releases. What other band would include studio, live and remix tracks together is such a smooth package? This cd has me transfixed.

While "Sound of Music" remains their best, P5 bring us another collection of inventive, lounge-inspired songs that will hook you on the 3rd or 4th listen. While some songs could fit on recent albums (the opening "A Perfect World" for instance, or the fourth track "A Room with a View"), there are some new sounds ("20th Century Girl", with a mid-tempo 60's go-go backbeat), and a pure (albeit tongue-in-cheek) samba ("Room Service"--LOVE IT!). Should be part of your P5 collection.

while bits of this record seem to be simply the logical progression from the International Playboy & Playgirl Record, there are a few startlingly superb tracks which seem to harken back to Happy End of the World, my personal favorite P5 disc. LOUDLAND!, Tout, Tout Pour Ma Cherie, and Roma are brilliant in ways this pair have never quite been brilliant before. the rest of the album is agreeably put together, with appropriate helpings of the standard-issue P5 glamour, kitschyness, and materialism you've come to expect.

Pizzicato Five's boisterous Fifth Release from Matador makes abundantly clear why Spin described this Tokyo group as "what Hello Kitty might sound like." Like Ben Folds Five, P5 features less members than advertised (it's a duo), and the piano-powered hooks on Fifth Release prove that these acts have more in common than numerical fraud.