Whether it's come in the form of compliment or dig, out of genuine conviction or supreme laziness, Hi-Posi has been lauded with comparisons to the dearly departed Pizzicato Five. To be fair, both acts do work within the "genre" of Japanese pop, with characteristic emphasis on cuteness and kitsch. Still, using this comparison to write off Hi-Posi seems to easy. It's not that Hi-Posi are such a groundbreaking act that their music demands to stand miles from their contemporaries. But there's enough variation within their "sound" (we're about to see why that term should be used loosely) that mere association, and not all-out comparison with the likes of P5 and Cornelius, is more than sufficient.

Perhaps the temptation in calling Hi-Posi "the new Pizzicato Five" stems from the cover art of the band's debut U.S. full-length, 4N5. It's graced with a depiction of a somber-looking male/female duo that instantly reminds us of the countless glossy promotional photos we've seen of P5. But, like the moral of so many cute anime cartoons, the cover of 4N5 proves that looks can be deceiving. Aside from collaborators that come on board mostly as producers, Hi-Posi is a one-woman act. The charming, baby-voiced Miho Moribayashi wrote all the lyrics and music, played vital keyboard on almost all the tracks, and produced no less than five of them. She's more than just a spokeswoman with a novel voice; she's a an adroit musician.

On 4N5, Moribayashi is a human Q*Bert, swiftly jumping from one genre to the unpredictable next, and avoiding ever-venomous clichés. The album starts on hyper-speed with "The Wonderful Go Go" and "The Computer No.3." Both songs' BPMs clock in around the 140 mark and play like happy hardcore without the dissonant beats. Moribayashi's melodies are probably much poppier than you'd imagine (which is really saying something), and her infantile delivery should render them unlistenably cloying. Fortunately, she only revels in her vocal preciousness once on the album, during the guitar-driven "Experimental Girl." Elsewhere, a laid-back vocal approach makes for palatable success.

Towa Tei stops by to produce "Only 'I Love You,'" one of the record's very best moments. It's sunny, rife with percolating beats, and completely realized during the verse-concluding hook, when Tei lays down one of his trademark so-funky-it-hurts basslines. "Only 'I Love You'" proves itself as a skittery, futuristic R&B; number that puts Timbaland's beat-skipping to shame. The track blends into "The Fragile Glass," a spacy and subtle, though pulsing number that has little to do with its predecessor, but fits ingeniously nonetheless.

Since Moribayashi sings solely in Japanese, translations are kindly provided in the liner notes, and naturally, hilarity ensues. The chorus of the Erasure-esque "When the Sky Gets Sad" has Moribayashi approximating, "When the sky gets sad/ I trace your shape/ When the sky gets sad/ I go back to that place on that day." The translation of "I Never Came 1*cnce" shows Moribayashi in a moment of near-Prince sexual bluntness, relating her dissatisfaction with her partner by confiding, "100%, 100 times out of 100/ I trained myself to get wet for any situation/ That's all."

Probably the biggest similarity between Pizzicato Five and Hi-Posi is that both make music that's ultimately deemed slight and unimportant by the musically uptight. It's a shame, too, because both acts are all about lightening people up, intoxicating with obscenely slick production, unshakable melodies, and a full realization of style-as-substance. That said, it would be foolhardy to let hype and snobbery to get in the way of enjoying a record as consistently surprising and satisfying as 4N5.

-Richard M. Juzwiak