The Canadian singer/songwriter Jane Siberry, whose fascinating second album, No Borders Here, is the first to receive wide distribution, is a garage-band Laurie Anderson. She has a taste for electronics as well as a wispy voice of uncertain pitch that frequently lapses into plain old talking. Her lyrics tend to be cosmic-comic vignettes about the epiphanies that occur in everyday life – you...

On her first album since The Sensual World, in 1989, Kate Bush continues in the manner of that album's verbal directness while displaying a melodic sense that's in peak form – there are more hooks on The Red Shoes, both subtle and obvious, than on any of her releases since The Dreaming, in 1982. Bush seems content now to dress her songs in simpler – though still occasionally antic –...