Solex: Pick Up

Fractured fairy tales

Parents across America waste ridiculous quantities of time every year trying to teach their kids not to watch cartoons when they're doing homework. Whatever half-assed attention the kids direct at cartoons is at the expense of academia, or so the argument goes; if they did the homework first, they'd enjoy the shows more anyway. Right?

Wrong. Turning on the cartoons while doing something else may be a different experience, but it's definitely not a sacrifice. Your imagination is simply focused differently, trying to connect the remaining elements of the show while your eyes are on something else. The experience is bewildering, but it's also newly entertaining. In fact, it's a lot like listening to the new Solex album, Pick Up.

Elisabeth Esselink, who works under the Solex moniker, samples recordings she's made at concerts, ranging from orchestrated movements to demure jazz to drum 'n' bass beats, to form the instrumentals on Pick Up. She complements these peculiar instrumental pastiches with her vocals, wandering narratives sung in a naïve, girlish soprano. The combination of estranged, rapidly-shifting music and childlike singing is sometimes choppy, often disorienting, and always charming.

Few of Esselink's songs make sense in the traditional logic of pop songs, but that isn't to say that Solex isn't connected to pop music. Though her instrumentals are haltingly eccentric and varied, often shifting genres mid-song, her vocals are full of pop references. When distorting her voice, she mimics Kim Gordon; she does youthful nonsense a la Tanya Donnelly and scat-inflected kitsch like Sarah Cracknell of Saint Etienne. In any case, her voice remains innocent, pleasant, and, most importantly, tuneful. With her songs' lack of a coherent lyrical narrative and their constantly mutating textures, Esselink's singing provides necessary access to the fine pop tunes hidden in the instrumental melange. On Pick Up, this combination is immensely successful, though not apparent on the first few listens. At the cost of being initially esoteric and alienating, it's an excellent album of wildly experimental fun. You just need to invest your imagination to find Pick Up's discreet, ecstatic pop songs. (Matador)

—Sara Edward-Corbett

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