Scarlet's Walk (2002)

Tori Amos has always flirted with dippiness, sometimes quite seductively, but with Scarlet's Walk, a grandiloquent ''sonic novel,'' as her label bills it, she achieves full-blown looniness. A song cycle about a woman traversing America, ''Walk'' conflates Native American oppression, anti-homophobia, the 9/11 attacks, and motherhood with appalling hubris. The melodies meander pretty unforgivably too. Buy it and be directed to a website that maps out Scarlet's death-defying journey and Tori's life-affirming tour-date schedule. Cumulative effect? Soul-depleting.