Album Cover  

For those of you who prefer Waters vocal acrobatics to her traditional jazz tunes (although you would be a fool to pass up on the beautiful singing of her debut album), this is the record to get. Recorded during a tour of US colleges, College finds the artist focusing almost exclusively on what she can do with her vocals (and believe me, she's quite impressive and you'll understand why she was such an influence on Diamanda Galas). I'm a big fan of this side of Waters, but when you are presented with only bizarre vocal yelps, moans, whispers and screams, you lose the impact of the progression found on Sings. But then again, you could take each song for a miniature version of the preceding album. Hush Little Baby With Ba Ha Bad for example starts off calmly enough until Waters finally goes nuts a few minutes later. An intense, difficult, but very rewarding album, so why not get this along with Sings?