Tori Amos

Tori Amos: Earth Mother, faerie songstress, suckler of pigs, piano goddess. The 44-year-old singer has worn many a persona over her two-decade-plus career, but never so literally as on her latest concept album, American Doll Posse, in which Amos is joined by four alter egos — each female archetypes based on Greek deities — to perform the disc's 23 songs: There's streetwise, confrontational "Pip," hippie-chick "Clyde," politico/photographer "Isabel," and glamour girl "Santa." Through them, and as herself, Amos sings some of her most absorbing tunes ever, touching on MILFs, whores, sluts, soda pop, dogs, cats and George W. Bush as she deftly weaves together pop, blues, cabaret jazz, and industrial textures. Live, she brings all of her guises — in appropriate wig and costume — to the stage to deliver their Posse numbers and career-spanning Tori material. And not without some controversy: Performing her beloved anthem "Me and a Gun" as Pip, Amos has been explicitly underscoring the cathartic tale of her own rape with the use of a rather large knife, bringing new life and fresh perspective to that and other old cuts.