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Tori Amos's third album, Boys for Pelé (Atlantic), is a work of such lyric density that it would require an act of faith to conclude that there are coherent meanings behind the strung-together, enigmatic images. The tone is set by the disc's opener, "Beauty Queen," whose text I quote in full: "She's a Beauty Queen/My sweet bean bag in the street/Take it/Down at the laundry scene/Don't know why she's in my hand/Can't figure what it is/But I lie again."

Amos has always been good at coming up with intriguingly obscure lines. On her first two albums, however, there were enough stretches of clear and sometimes savage directness to justify the arcane bits of counterbalancing reticence. This time out, indirectness is the dominant mode of expression. Pelé hints at all sorts of possibilities; it feels as if it were about specific ideas. But in the end everything remains frustratingly opaque.

It might not seem fair to harp on Amos's lyric cubism when you remember that randomly aligned and secret allusions, private references, and gobs of flat-out nonsense have been the hallmark of a certain type of singer/songwriter ever since Dylan discovered methamphetamine. But because her music remains so spare -- basically her lustrous soprano voice and piano, with the occasional and generally unobtrusive garnishing -- the ear has nowhere to wander. It's true that a degree of heavily cloaked meaning might be to the point. Amos has said that the songs on Pelé are about "the realization that you and the person you're with are talking different languages" and about "the things that go on in a woman's heart -- the things that have to remain hidden." And she does create, in music and words, the apt-tremor-of-portent mood suggestive of contemplating the inexpressible ("Who has not sat, afraid, before his heart's curtain" wrote Rilke). But eventually you want more -- more to go on, if nothing else.

Meanwhile, we do have some good one-liners here, and two-liners as well. "How's your Jesus Christ been hanging?" ("Father Lucifer") is pretty sharp. "I need a big loan from the girl zone" ("Caught a Lite Sneeze") is something we can all relate to. And "If my heart's soaking wet/Boy your boots can leave a mess" ("Hey Jupiter") is clear enough. But for every quotable quote, there are a half-dozen murky howlers like "I need some voodoo on these prunes" ("In the Springtime of His Voodoo") and, my personal favorite, "If I lose my Cracker Jacks at the tidal wave/I got a place in the Pope's rubber robe" ("Muhammed My Friend"). Of course, it's easy to take lines out of context and make them seem better or worse than they are, but there is no context for these; they're surrounded by other lines that keep their secrets to themselves.

A few songs are less surreally prismatic. "Little Amsterdam" is a piece of Southern gothic with interracial love and murder, but also with a key piece of information withheld, so that its apparent punchline, "Mama it wasn't my bullet," is a cipher. "Professional Widow" tantalizingly evokes Courtney Love (its meta-grunge disrupts the disc's low-key ambiance), Jackie-O, Yoko, and/or none of the above. In "Marianne," the sketch of a possible suicide offers the kind of sardonic observation that was prevalent on Amos's first two albums: "I'm just having thoughts of Marianne/She could outrun the fastest slug/She could/Marianne/Quickest girl in the frying pan." And "Putting the Damage On" sings of an ill-fated attraction to theatrically damaged types, which seems to be a theme running through the 19 songs here -- ill-fated attractions and anger at having lost yourself in a relationship, mixed with the fear that the experience will be repeated over and over. But that's merely a guess.

So this one is a puzzler. Amos has established herself as a sensitive soul who can also bite your face off if it comes to that, a rape victim who refused to shut down or shut up and remained open to the recklessness of caring about other people. Then what is one to make of these art songs, with their vague insinuations and obtuse cleverness full of the sort of dainty strategies one associates with fainter hearts and lesser talents? I think she's trying to be more subtle, to reshape her experiences into allegorical montages; and I don't think it works. I don't think she's come up with enough genuinely allusive images to suggest whatever personal revelations she's had -- kind of like Elvis Costello at his worst, though he often gets by on archness and music. Amos, however, is no wit and she keeps the music plain. And so she talks and talks and still ends up sounding withdrawn and non-communicative. Which may be what she intended, but I doubt it.