Being asked to join Between the Waters with three members of The Garden was a dream come true for vocalist Patricia Wake.

		BETWEEN THE WATERS What: CD release show with Centrale Electrique, Faded Sympathy When: Tonight at 8 Where: Garfield Artworks, Garfield 412-361-2262

"I loved them," Wake says of The Garden, one of Pittsburgh's most respected, longest-running ethereal acts. "And I'd always thought if there was anyone in Pittsburgh I would have wanted to play with, it was them."

And given the haunting, ethereal beauty of Wake's vocals on "Connection," the band's impressive first release, those members of the Garden should be feeling pretty happy, too. It's a breathtaking effort, sure to please old Garden fans while reaching out to kids who cut their teeth on 4AD-style dream-pop and incorporating elements of Celtic folk on tracks like "Shifting Sand," the richly textured opener with haunting violin by former Garden member Tanya Kavalkovich (who's also been in Isabelle and Underflowers).

Asked how she'd compare Between the Waters to The Garden, Wake says, "I would say we're maybe not quite as dark and brooding as the Garden. We still have a lot of the same elements, but one of their goals for this was to really be able to do some different things, maybe throw in a few things that are a little lighter and maybe a little poppier than what they had previously done."

Music this ethereal doesn't get much poppier than "Into Beauty," an aptly titled track that in a perfect world would be topping the national charts at adult-alternative radio before the year is out.

"It took a while," says Wake, to arrive at the sound of "Connection." "We went back and forth between a lot of the influences that we wanted to bring in. We really liked the shoegazer influences and the '80s. A lot of the songs that I write tend to be a little more along the darker, adult-alternative lines, so I think in the beginning we had a little bit of a swaying back and forth between the pop-rock sound and the adult-alternative, but I think we finally moved into having a nice balance of those."

Together since May of 2002, Between The Waters also features Garden members Christine Sacramento on guitar and Anthony LaCava on bass, with drummer Jim Perry of Blue Sun, Prague and Six Gun Jury rounding out the lineup.

The name, Wake explains with a laugh, is "another term for the card of the star from the Tarot deck. And we liked it because it did kind of have maybe a feeling of the Three Rivers."