This came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Elisabeth (Solex) Esselink makes it look so easy.
A couple of years back, she bought a used recorder, sampled some old CDs from the record store she owns in Amsterdam, topped that with sweetly detached, sing-songy vocals and voila!, she had Solex Vs. The Hitmeister, one of the top indie albums of 1998. Such a feat would be impossible to duplicate; wisely, with Pick Up, she doesn’t try. Instead, she moves forward, creating smoother tunes that lurch less than her debut’s Frankenstein constructs, while her vocals give you the impression she at least knows what language she’s singing in — even if she still seems to be making up the words on the spot. Once again, her arty experimentalism might remind some of Björk; however, her forays into twisted blues and Beckish folk-whimsy also invite comparison to Luscious Jackson and Cibo Matto. Esselink may be edging toward commerciality, but there are still no boundaries to her sound.
