If, as popular science has proven, Kraftwerk was an abomination against God, nature and mom, then Señor Coconut is the Holy Dude's sweet revenge. Take note, you heathens: the Big Guy no longer dabbles with raining toads, burning bushes or turning water into wine. No sir, He's in the big leagues now, tackling the real challenges and the seemingly impossible. Today's new and improved Almighty, with the help of his devoted servant Señor Coconut (aka German artist Uwe Schmidt), performs the miracle of all miracles -- He turns cheese into gold! It's nothing less than divine alchemy. What more proof do you need? Repent! Confess your devotion to the new masters of swank. And rest assured that your place is secured in that groovy pad in the sky.

Let's get a few things on the table. Yes, it's a novelty act. Yes, it's a put-on. Yes, it's an inside joke -- but it's one of the best inside jokes to come along since Tiny Tim put "Stairway to Heaven" in its rightful place. As with Mr. Tim, the beauty of Señor Coconut is the absolutely straight face with which he pulls off this gag. Going so far as to add a bilingual introduction to CD, these fellows are sure to make more than one uppity hipster sneer "Jeez, I was into 'The Robots' before it was cool." That's the beauty of this CD. The shadowy Schmidt has taken something that was already cheddary and made it even more so, without so much as winking at the audience. Sure, it's easy for, say, the Swinging Erudites to send up the Ramones as an aging bowling alley lounge act. But to take something that was never taken seriously in the first place and treat it with respect? That's what I call clever.

Even if you were never a Kraftwerk fan, you'll likely recognize many of these tunes. Though immensely self-important, those Germans captured that certain zombie-like stupor of their time. Don't get me wrong: while it was empty, it was great candy. Yet the original songs' droning synthesizers will never seep into the insipid tunes piped into places like Home Depot -- unlike other vapid Kraftwerk contemporaries, such as Duran Duran, who seem to greet me in every bloated chain store I visit. Señor Coconut's take on these tunes seems so innocuous and easy listening-ish that they may easily provide the soundtrack for your next adventure in Bed, Bath and Beyond. Despite the harmless and perhaps tired lounge flavor, it's the sexy vocals chanting, "we are showroom dummies" that inject a delicious bit of subversion into an otherwise muzak mosaic.