Talk Normal: The Laurie Anderson Anthology (2012)

Musician-performance artist Laurie Anderson's early indelible experiments still surprise with each precisely calculated drawl, but her subsequent flirtation with pop made for strange bedfellows. The double disc Talk Normal: The Laurie Anderson Anthology sifts through two decades of recordings for an evenhanded career survey, ending with her welcome return to minimalist gestures and wry narratives. Her chief gifts may be for spectacle and story, but the music itself is sometimes brilliant, only occasionally lackluster. B+