urges and ambiguous sexuality. "Give you something sweet each time you come inside," she sings to the apparently male object of her desire to whom, even after lying "by the ocean making love to her," Hawkins is still bound. The inevitable Madonna comparisons make sense when Hawkins can't get her voice out of her nose (as on "Saviour Child"), but while Madonna is a willful shocker whose scripted fantasies make Nightline, Hawkins knows no rules to break. She left home as a teen, moved in with a cast of eccentric musicians, skipped school and learned to play drums. She's twenty-five now and considers herself omni-sexual.

Over the course of the eleven songs on Tongues and Tails (including a surprisingly tender version of Bob Dylan's 1966 single "I Want You," from Blonde on Blonde, which she covered because it's always been her favorite), Hawkins's voice varies from wail to plead, growl to whisper, croon to chirp, Joni Mitchell to Bjork of the Sugarcubes, sometimes within one verse. Musically, the album is equally diverse – roving from rock & roll to synth pop and moody, percussion-laden tracks. What ties it all together is sex – like Prince, except not as daffy, like Seal, only not as cosmic. Sex without boundaries, sex inextricable from emotion, sex that's sensuous and sex as spirituality. But never sex as currency, even as she preens and embraces herself on the cover of this searching, seductive debut. (RS 631)

CHRISTIAN WRIGHT