The Pitchfork precogs reached consensus. There wasn't even an inking of a minority report on Low Kick and Hard Bop. All three mutant visionaries reported that only Elisabeth Esselink (operational guise: Solex) could have created the splendidly chaotic beat-a-rama. But I consulted the Pitchfork precogs only out of curiosity. From the opening moments of the title track through to the closer, "Look-- No Fingerprints!" I couldn't mistake any of this album for someone else's work.
The debut Solex album, Solex vs. the Hitmeister, sampled unwanted record store vinyl, telling personal tales of ripped stockings and Solex's Rolex. Solex album number two, Pick Up, sampled live performances and roughened up the gentler edges of the debut, but retained the minuscule vignettes of trivial activity. "Oh Blimey" tells of a woman pulling "bits and bobs" out of her pocket with all the glee of Björk, but none of the pixie princess' staged naiveté. Despite the commonplaceness of her lyrics, Esselink made sure that the musical accompaniment was far harsher thar before. Perhaps someone had offloaded a bunch of soundboard tapes by Minor Threat's Dutch equivalents.
Though Low Kick and Hard Bop doesn't retreat from Pick Up's abrasiveness, it does draw its samples from a wider array of sources, with Esselink making far savvier choices of skitter-funk drum breaks to loop. Thus, Low Kick and Hard Bop takes far fewer listens to capture the listener. This third time around has given Esselink the opportunity to show off her near-perfect ability to mimic Fall song titles. "Mere Imposters," "Ease Up You Fundamentalists," and "Look-- No Fingerprints!" are just three examples of Esselink's appropriatior of Mark E. Smith's askance appellation engine.
"Mere Imposters" deals with a formal apple-bobbing competition at a dinner party supervised by the waitstaff; "Have You No Shame, Girl?" depicts a catfight between dancing girls. I'm at a loss to figure out what "Not a Hoot!" is about, even though I find it ar irresistible bayou-bounce complete with gris-gris guitars and menacing backbeats.
But what I find so engrossing about Low Kick and Hard Bop isn't the samples, it's how Esselink combines them and submits them to her idiosyncratic style. It's quite a feat to take quirky elements from so many diverse sources and make them coherent, to the extent that I don't even register that they're samples. They become part of the Solex entity. Even Esselink's vocal mannerism wavers, but remains unmistakably Solex. From swamp-thing growl to Tanya Donelly-does-a-Kathleen-Hanna-Valley-Girl-rant, Esselink stamps these styles with the Solex identity. Her ability to integrate discordant and heterogeneous elements leads me to believe that if Esselink was a shift manager at Subway, rather than a record shop owner, she'd as effortlessly construct something unique from three-day-old veggies and moldy bologna.
Yet the consistency of Solex material is potentially the agent of its own downfall. Play Solex vs. the Hitmeister after Low Kick and Hard Bop and you might think that they were recorded at the same time, rather than four years apart. Low Kick Hard Bop offers nothing essentially different than past Solex releases. While I'm not asking for a duet with Peaches or a remix by the Streets, I would appreciate a new facet to the customary lo-fi diamond boogaloo. I quizzed the Pitchfork precogs with a 'wither Solex?' question. While two out of three precogs foresaw a sequin-and-Appletini future for Esselink in Vegas, I prefer the less radical modification to Solex as described in the dissenting report. Time will tell if the minority precog and I will be thoroughly satisfied.
