Photo by Desmond Murray

Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”. Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”. Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence”, and pretty much all of her 2001 concept effort, Strange Little Girls, for that matter. There isn’t a cover Tori Amos can’t touch and transform into her own haunted and profane piano-magistrated gold dust. Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d. city‘s “Swimming Pools (Drank)” — which became something of an ironic party hit despite its lyrics warning about the dangers of excess — is the latest to get a contextual readjustment through Amos’ vision in her collaboration with British producer (and former member of the Buggles and Yes) Trevor Horn on this highlight from his own just-released covers album, Echoes: Ancient & Modern. This isn’t the first time Amos has covered the modern American rap songbook under her own tongue and fingertip (that would be her uncomfortable take on Eminem’s “’97 Bonnie & Clyde”,) and in the way she swerves around Lamar’s bars with a naturally unsettling cadence, Amos remains a master of reinterpreting vibes in her own strange way.

Trevor Horn’s Echoes: Ancient & Modern is available now on Deutsche Grammophon.