Grooves

Cornelius
Point (Matador)

On Point, Cornelius performs a valuable customer service by tipping off the listener to his chronic short attention span. The first track, "Bug," is composed of a single piano note, a few guitar chords, static, Cornelius harmonizing, a bird chirping, and a filtered trumpet, all in 38 seconds. The rest of the album is equally discordant, leaping from "Smoke" 's power pop thrust to "Another View Point" 's new-wave funk like a frog on acid. Then there's the electronic folk rock of "Point of View," which finds Cornelius strumming a guitar over a staccato drum roll that corrects itself into a polyrhythmic backbeat. It's as if Cornelius is going out of his way to make sure there's something for everybody to enjoy.

Like much of Japanese pop, Point is relentlessly melodic, and the harmonies are beautiful and sweet like the Beatles' "Lovely Rita." Having (with the exception of "I Hate Hate") jettisoned the distorted guitars that marked much of his last album, Fantasma, Cornelius wraps his songs in rhythmically strummed acoustic guitars that command you to bob your head as if you were dancing. Some of the tracks even use a midtempo house beat ("Drop") or disparate sounds in an ambient sequence ("Bird Watching at Inner Forest"). Although Cornelius's ever present hooks and catchy choruses make Point sound sickly sweet at times, the frequent shifts in musical approach are entertaining in an unpredictable way.

Point's pop cataclysm can be both endearing and alienating, and it's not just because of Cornelius's mixture of English and Japanese lyrics (to be fair, they're mostly repetitive and monosyllabic). While outwardly sincere, its immaculate design, demonstrated by a complete lack of extraneous notes or indulgent tracks, seems somewhat superficial. Then again, perhaps Cornelius's unabashedly happy music inevitably leads cynical listeners to wonder whether Point has been made by someone who is silly and shallow or simply content. (Mosi Reeves)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Yeah Yeah Yeahs EP (Shifty)

Her bandmates sound like they're dry-humping all over their fave downtown dance floors on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' debut, but vocalist Karen O still can't get no satisfaction. Damn hard to believe, too, considering that the New York City trio's herky-jerky junk-punk sounds even more like sex in the city than PJ Harvey's last album does. The way O tells it, however, that's exactly the problem: "As a fuck, son, you sucked!" she huffs on the turned-on kiss-off "Bang." Then she digs the heels of her knee-highs deeper, panting like Dry-era Harvey: "I don't think you're my type / What I need tonight's the real thing."

Sexual frustration ain't nearly as sexy in reality as it is coming from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, of course, but no one's gonna debate facts when the fiction sounds this exhilarating. With O's cat-in-heat shrieks punctuating the almost-arty, almost-bluesy bombast of drummer Brian Chase and guitarist Nick Zinner, the trio's punk ruckus is all tense anticipation and twitch-inducing tempos. Recorded by Jerry Teel (Boss Hog, Knoxville Girls), the five-song EP teases to please, its tracks abruptly switching gears before they should, stopping just short of exploding – the perfect structural complement to O's thwarted libido.

The band's masterpiece, however, is the closing "Our Time," a fists-flailing, slow-building anthem that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs actually allow to climax, finally letting off all their steamy, pent-up passion. "It's the year to be hated / So glad that we made it," O sings like she's covering Joan Jett covering "Crimson and Clover." "It's our time, sweet baby, to break on through!" Maybe the song wasn't intended as such, but the trio pulls off the Sept. 11 metaphor like few other musicians have, barreling triumphantly through the song like three kids who may not always get what they want but know exactly what they need. (Jimmy Draper)

Jay-Z
Unplugged (MTV)

Jay-Z's been on top for so long that it's almost embarrassing, but he's not vacating his seat just yet. With his new MTV Unplugged session, J-Hova simply notches another mark in the win column as he pours charm out like New Year's champagne.

It begins with his tongue-in-cheek introduction – "welcome to Jay-Z's poetry reading" – as he warms up the audience with a purposefully bad, coffee-house composition. Once the Roots swing into gear, the party rockets off, starting with the vicious dis "The Takeover" from his recent album Blueprint. There's no question that the Roots provide an immeasurable assist to this project – their chops have been fine-tuned for years, and they handle everything from the funk slop of Jay-Z's 1995 smash "Ain't No N––" to the exotic melodies of 1999's "Big Pimpin" to the soul hammer of Bobby "Blue" Bland on "Heart of the City." Plus, the Roots' gift for spontaneous remixing makes for great moments on the album, like when Mary J. Blige duets on "Can't Knock the Hustle" and the band swings into the melody of her recent hit "Family Affair."

For all his legal problems and storied beef with Nas, Jay-Z seems just plain happy to be there. It's no surprise that he handles his "best of" repertoire effortlessly, and the session captures his casual interactions with the band and, especially, the audience, which clearly worships him. He graciously returns the adulation without pretense – a lovefest for certain, but one to relish. (Oliver Wang)

Nookie
In@TheDeepEnd (Good Looking)

Could it be that junglists make better house than the majority of lobotomized house heads cluttering up the market with wallpaper, soft-serve pap? Drum 'n' bass veteran Nookie (Gavin Cheung) sucker punches house on his stunning debut full-length on LTJ Bukem's Good Looking Records. The album consists mostly of cosmically inclined, Bukemesque atmospheric drum 'n' bass, but the journey concludes with two of the most sublimely moody techno and house productions I've come across in months: "Steppin' Back," a passionate nod to Detroit's techno old school, and "My Lovin'," an intensely melodic house track that seethes with Ebony Simone's erotic vocals.

But it comes as no surprise that a junglist would have a refreshed take on house. Expert drum 'n' bass producers have a deep appreciation of rhythmic resilience and intricate electronics – crucial elements that seem to elude much of the current deep house realm. Photek's Solaris was my favorite album of 2000, mainly because of the brilliant "Glamourama" and "Mine to Give," hard-hitting house tracks that were conceived with drum 'n' bass science in mind. Like Photek and other obsessive drum 'n' bass producers, Nookie pays hyperclose attention to the creation of immense bass lines and precise, firm beats and maintains the urban, dark techno edge that makes his music sound genuinely emotive, as opposed to vaguely happy and way too E'd out (hello, deep house).

Drum 'n' bass pieces like "Innerspace" (which I swear contains a sample of Future Sound of London's "Papua New Guinea") and "Natural Experience" roll with the multilayered, ambient dream-work style that personifies the Good Looking sound. Luscious melodies, swiftly ticking drums, and alien bytes recall the earlier aesthetics of labelmates Blu Mar Ten and Seba and Lotek, and although Nookie's take is not a radically current style, it's satisfying nonetheless. But it's really Nookie's assault on techno and house that strikes me. His album is evidence that the increasingly cornball and commercially driven house industry needs to put an end to exhausted notions of "deep" and "sexy" and get on with the real. Without a doubt, Nookie knows the score. (Amanda Nowinski)