Record Rack

** Cher, “not.com.mercial,” Isis Productions. Everybody considers Madonna to be pop’s queen of reinvention, but Cher is its goddess.

For one thing, the throaty-voiced singer can actually act (and has the Oscar to prove it). Her catlike ability to twist in mid-fall and land upright recently launched her from infomercial purgatory to world conquest with 1998’s electronica-tinged hit album “Believe.” Now the 54-year-old reveals yet another facet with her first autobiographical collection, available starting Wednesday only via the Internet (at www.cher.com and www.cherdirect.com).

Cher put her poetry to music six years ago, aided by songwriter-producer Bruce Roberts and Timbuk 3’s Pat MacDonald. She recorded these mainstream, bluesy-folky rockers and ballads with the “Late Show With David Letterman” band and added two from outside writers, including “Classified 1A,” ’70s-vintage Vietnam protest by her late former husband Sonny Bono.

This album’s straightforward production and often bleak world view are a far cry from “Believe.” (Warner Bros. Records will release a proper follow-up to that one next spring.) Well, except that the lyrics are still full of cliches. Nevertheless, fans should be fascinated by such revealing moments as the creepy “Sisters of Mercy,” a bleak examination of young Cher’s stay in a Catholic orphanage.

However, she broods so deeply that her perspective is sometimes distorted and her simple ideas overwrought. Yes, it’s too bad about Kurt Cobain’s suicide, as she agonizes in “(The Fall) Kurt’s Blues,” but it’s a bit much to elevate him to the level of, say, an assassinated Kennedy.

Still, her passion stops shy of camp. Which for Cher is quite an accomplishment.

*

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