The Chicago-born performance artist and storyteller Laurie Anderson has been a cult figure for almost 20 years, in large measure thanks to her intermittent collaborations with Lou Reed. Mixing electronic pop with intellectual dialects is a perilous undertaking, but this collection shows Anderson doing it remarkably successfully, from spoken-word flights of fancy to ambitious song cycles based on classic operas. Containing generous selections from her seven Warner albums, and intelligently assembled and packaged, this anthology is a feast for fans of cerebral pop.