*** Bonfire Madigan

. . . FROM THE BURNPILE

(Villa Villakula/Kill Rock Stars)

Madigan Shive is a baroque folk-punk diva who loves clashing tone with mood. Her deep, strong voice is soulful when she's wrathful and sexy when she's standoffish. And she plays a mean cello to boot.

On her second album, . . . from the Burnpile, she's joined by bass, lead guitar, drums, and on a couple of tunes a turntable DJ. (The "Bonfire" is there to distinguish this from her solo work.) Her best songs are either catchy or skronky, but when she trades her cello for a guitar, the results can be gratingly sentimental. She's much more fun (and intimidating) when she's incendiary, spouting likes like "Over my dead body/You'll touch me or her," on "Anthemic Amendments." This song should come off as an annoying diatribe, but its hip-hop groove and warm, humming cello make it appealingly funky. On "Snowfell Summer" the moaning cello gives way to prancing pop as she offers comment on our times: "Well-fed, we're apathetic." And she does a better job than most of her post-riot-grrrl contemporaries at nailing down the connection between love and protest with the song "Smoke Signals from the Burnpile," where she serenades a lover with the lines "You are my Joan of Arc/You are my Rosa Parks."

-- Joshua Westlund