"Laura Love" is an entertainment smorgasbord. One minute she's rappin' about her bootay and the next she's yodeling. If you want to know where she's coming from, you better look in all directions, but no matter where she comes from, when she arrives you'll be glad she did.

Hot on the heels of her Mercury debut album, "Octoroon," comes "Shum Ticky," with the most disparate collection of good music you'll find today. Like Liz Phair and Ani DiFranco, Laura steps out of the mold, refusing to be categorized by her music. In addition she has one of the sweetest voices, one that can change register from song to song or in midstream. Oh, she also plays a mean bass.

I enjoyed all the songs on this album but several stand out in my mind. The cover of "The Clapping Song," with guest "Sir Mix-a-Lot," has a beat that just says get your bootay on the floor (even while she yodels).

Like the song "Baby Got Back," Laura isn't afraid to acknowledge she has a butt as she sings "Mabootay" like an African tribal chant, all the while saying, hey it's a part of me, it goes where I go, and I treat it right. There is a touch of the Middle East with the opening fiddle solo by Barbara Lamb and a little ululation. It also contains an excellent acoustic guitar solo by Ron Cook.

The title track is like a Sesame Street song for grownups, with the inane but somehow catchy phrase "Shum Ticky," that beats "whatever" all to hell. "Less is More" is another song in the same vein. Hell, for a moment it seems I can even hear Big Bird singing...life's little lessons encapsulated in a song.

Bittersweet sadness infuses "Sorrow" and "Bang Bang," while the folk- pathos of a Joan Baez fills "I'm A Givin Way." Yet, of all of these songs, it is the little soft tune "Serenity" that made me lean close to the CD player to hear the words.

"Nothing is stranger than reality" sings Laura on "Woe is Me," nothing except why anyone would pass up this gem.