Solex
Low Kick and Hard Bop
Matador Records

On her debut, Solex vs. the Hitmeister, Elisabeth Esselink, aka Solex, incorporated the goofy gimmick of titling every song after herself — "Solex for Awhile," "Solex's Snag," "Rolex by Solex," etc. She might as well have included "Solex Can Do No Wrong."

Where Hitmeister was a scattershot selection of low-budget sample collage, the follow-up, Pick Up, raised the stakes. Recorded on vastly improved equipment, it was more mature, more cohesive than Hitmeister, but the album, for the most part, lacked anything on par with the debut album's best tracks.

On Low Kick and Hard Bop, however, Solex pulls everything together for her most engaging outing yet. The odd time signatures, stop-start melodies and genre flips are still there, as is the quirky enunciation of off-syllables that's earned Esselink more than a few comparisons to Björk. What makes Low Kick stand out, though, is the odd show-tune ambiance that holds the album together.

"Look... No Fingerprints," the final track, couples a goofy, Kabuki-style organ loop with cymbals, electronic drums and a weird story of Kelly, who "scored his first knockout when he was only fifteen. The knockee was his brother Jean, only thirteen." Think Björk taking over the leadership of Return of the Jedi's Max Rebo Band, and you're in the ballpark.

But the best bit comes when Esselink combines mariachi percussion and a kazoo on "Good Comrades Go to Heaven." Interspersed is something resembling the bowed guitar on Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" as well as an oft-repeated single blast of bass guitar feedback that's a kissing cousin to the bottomed-out guitar at the core of Elastica's "Connection."

"Claims to have the world's most dangerous variety trick," is the line Solex uses to open the song, seemingly oblivious to the degree of danger her own loony tunes variety act carries.

Really, there's not a bad track in Solex's songbook this time out. Whether it's the chorus line shuffle of "Honey (Amsterdam is not L.A.!)" or the big-band bombast of "You Say Potato, I Say Aardappel," Solex scores a 10 because her admittedly kitschy source material sounds nothing like kitsch in the grand pastiche of her music. For all its cartoon, showtune feel, Low Kick doesn't sound contrived, forced or gimmicky. One needs to listen no further then the half-shouted, half-yelped opening track to know that this is honest music from a hardworking artist who's loving the view from the top of the pop world.

To quote Solex: "Keep on doing what you're doing 'cause you're doing something right."

— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)