Album Reviews : Masters of Sugary Melodies Fill Album With Melodrama : ** Nine Inch Nails, “Further Down the Spiral,” TVT/Interscope.

More than an hour of remixes (including three variations each of two songs) seems like something only a club deejay could love, but these retooled tracks from Nine Inch Nails’ breakthrough album “The Downward Spiral” are remarkably engaging. The remixes were done by group leader Trent Reznor and such studio luminaries as Aphex Twin, Rick Rubin and Jim Thirlwell.

The deconstructed, reconfigured songs can be both jarring and mesmerizing. But the most interesting tracks have to do with emotional rather than structural rearrangements. The “polite” remix of “Eraser” transforms the turbulent meditation on self-loathing into a strange, restrained canticle, highlighting the harshness of the lyric. The “quiet” version of “Hurt” strips the brooding, damaged song down to a heart-rending, near-acoustic lament.

*** Various artists, “Tank Girl” soundtrack, Elektra. This estrogen-fueled compilation is a vibrant companion to the comic book world of Tank Girl. The femme voices (Bjork, L7, Hole) are strident and colorful; the male voices compliment (Devo’s “Girl U Want,” Ice-T’s “Big Gun”) or complement (Bush, Magnificent Bastards) them--and both sides of the story come together exuberantly in Joan Jett and Paul Westerberg’s crunchy, buzzing rendition of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It.”

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).