Strange Little Girls

On Strange Little Girls, the famously eccentric chanteuse not only reimagines — from a woman’s point of view — songs by such disparate male acts as the Boomtown Rats and Slayer, but poses Cindy Sherman-style in the CD artwork as the characters she’s conjured. The conceptual conceit might be lost on fans who can’t figure out what inspired Amos to appear, for instance, as a Goth chick for 10cc’s ”I’m Not in Love.” Still, ”Girls” is largely a success, even if most cuts sound traditionally Tori. She lays bare the pathos of Eminem’s ”’97 Bonnie and Clyde” and the stark gravity of Depeche Mode’s ”Enjoy the Silence.” Part off-the-rails feminist art project, part sheer genius.