Wit is rarely rewarded in pop music. That's especially true on the American end, where heavy doses of irony haven't translated well to the airwaves. So naturally, Canada's premier cerebral-novelty exports, Barenaked Ladies, haven't always had the best of luck here. Indeed, their coupling of the class clown with the sensitive romantic can be a hard marriage to digest in the span of a three-minute pop song.

Until Stunt, that is. Inexplicably rocketing into the Billboard Top 10 almost upon its release, Barenaked Ladies' fourth full-length recording follows in the same serio-silly footsteps as the band's lone previous domestic hit, "Brian Wilson." However, the group's strength -- its members' ability to combine humor and sadness (sample lyric: "I'm the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral") -- can also be its weakness. That is to say, they tend to kill themselves with cleverness. So even when they're striving to be earnest, one automatically assumes they're wearing smirks.

Stunt's first single, "One Week," bears out this self-absorbed prankster philosophy. A combination of acoustic pop, pseudo-funky guitar and white-boy rap breaks (which approach four-words-per-beat velocity), the track manages to cram references to LeAnn Rimes, Harrison Ford, The X-Files and Snickers candy bars into a story that presumably documents a dysfunctional relationship. Sound like a stretch? It is. Is it a quirky, catchy potential hit? You betcha. Will it sound dated in three years? Yep.

Doubtless, the Barenaked Ladies have a mighty way with a hook. But do remorse-ridden, lost-love laments really need spicing up with winking references to mutual masturbation ("In the Car")? But then again, if the Ladies took themselves too seriously, they could be just another Matchbox 20. And we can't have that sort of stunt. (** 1/2)

-- David Simutis

Cleopatra
Comin' Atcha
Maverick/Warner Bros.

When my dear music editor (a man I'm not afraid to say I love) requested a review of the debut CD from Cleopatra, a very young, very perky black-sister trio from Manchester, England, I thought he'd finally lost it. But, being the trend-spotter his job description requires, he had justifiable reasons: "This is like another Spice Girls/Hanson thing," I recall him saying, referring to Cleopatra's obvious commercial possibilities.

But, alas, in Cleopatra's case, the Spice Girls are Hanson -- as if they were some intricate gene-splicing experiment gone terribly awry. High-pitched, high-spirited ragamuffins Zainam, Yonah and Cleopatra are so sugary sweet they must bleed Kool-Aid. And on Comin' Atcha, they are simply girls laying down music for other girls. Sure, they mean well, but even if you attempt to see this stuff from the perspective of a chipper 14-year-old, the polished pop melodies and cloyingly uplifting lyrics ("We all want the same success / So we're wishing for the best") are still enough to make you wince. But let's give these gals the benefit of the doubt: Unlike the Spice Girls, they're more likely to improve with age than to lie about it. (** 1/2)

-- Craig D. Lindsey

Plastilina Mosh
Aquamosh
Capitol

Aquamosh is 1998's freshest, smartest, silliest hip-hop statement to date -- and fancy this: It's a product of Mexico. It was bound to happen. For decades now, the gringo music industry has been courting our neighbors to the south with varying degrees of cockiness, conducting an extremely arrogant and lopsided exchange of sounds and trends. Call it entertainment diplomacy's trickle-down effect.

Naturally, it's the young people of Mexico who have been the most indiscriminate in absorbing whatever's filtered their way. And now, finally, they're spitting some of it back at us -- in the guise of both the rampant rock en Espanol movement and less-definable multifaceted pop-culture scavengers such as Plastilina Mosh. Based in the urban/industrial center of Monterey (a fairly routine, eight-hour road trip from Houston, mind you), Plastilina Mosh is Alejandro Rosso and Jonas. At 22, Jonas is the younger and more extroverted of the two, and he has gladly taken on the role of lead singer/rapper/guitarist and all-around nuisance. The 25-year-old Rosso, meanwhile, is a student of both jazz and classical music and, as such, he's the main man behind Aquamosh's lush stockpile of keyboards (organ, Moog, piano), super-elastic looping effects, bountiful preprogrammed beats and insufferably clever, mix-and-match arrangements.

It's the friendly tension that erupts when the two clash that gives Aquamosh its ear-tickling fizz. Yet, what really lends a nervy, organic dynamism to this stunning 12-track debut is the playful way in which Plastilina Mosh both accommodates and assimilates those differences. Jonas's hard-rock loyalties rarely ever ram their way into the mix, but rather teasingly rub up against -- and play off of -- Rosso's more erudite sensibilities. As is evidenced by the slinky, ornamental jazz epic "I've Got That Milton Pacheco Kinda Feeling" (the perfect theme music, it would seem, for a '90s Charlie's Angels retread) and the gummy funk-hop workout of the title track, the pair has already mastered the art of creative give and take.