| Vena Cava is about as close as Diamanda Galas has come to a spoken word album, a suite of pieces in which she adopts varying personalities of mental patients or AIDS-related dementia. Between the mumblings and screams she intersperses snatches of songs, including "Amazing Grace" and "Hush Little Baby," but the overall effect is of listening to the carrying-ons of a madwoman, which is presumably the album's intent. |