Lenka, Lenka

Australian singer Lenka is no starry-eyed ingénue. So what if her cutie-pie vocals stir up images of Kewpie dolls and bunny rabbits? Her voice may be sweet, but underneath the adorable exterior it seems that Lenka is more than a little familiar with life's bitterness: with disappointments, with loneliness. But instead of crying about it, she's figuring out a way to combat misery: with optimism so irrepressible it's like she's flipping sadness the bird. Her self-titled debut is a virtual parade of exuberantly hooky pop songs engineered to help her brush off — if not quite eradicate — those pesky undercurrents of sorrow. She lays out her masterplan in the breezily buoyant song "Skipalong": "Keep smiling knowing all the while/the world will fall apart." The lyrics are sad, but they're delivered with a happy-go-lucky shrug instead of a whimper.

The piece de resistance of Lenka is "The Show," a neon-yellow upper of a song that begins sedately with a softly tinkling piano and Lenka quietly confessing that "I'm just a little bit caught in the middle/life is a maze and love is a riddle." But then the song builds into a lavish production number that evokes the theatricality of an old time musical. If all the world's a stage and the sun is just a giant spotlight, then Lenka knows she must make the most of it: "I've got to let it go and just enjoy the show." And enjoy she does. You can almost imagine the animated Disney animals frolicking around her as she tramps through the streets, soundtrack blaring. But don't abandon the Prozac prescription yet. Just as she gets to the grand finale and the credits are about to roll, she can't prevent her despair from bubbling back to the surface in a telling refrain of "I want my money back." Despite her best efforts Lenka turns out to be an unsatisfied customer, one who can't guarantee that her Hollywood saga will conclude with a happy ending.