Better Than Blood

Singer/songwriter McCauley has the perfect voice to match her penchant for bombastic pop/rock. On softer tracks, her whisper can sound husky and eerie, or fragile and little-girl-lost. When she rocks out, she can screech and wail with the best of them, sounding a bit like an alternate-universe Ani DiFranco who's a Top 40 star. The fun of the disc is not in breaking new ground, but in how well McCauley executes every stripe of heavy duty power pop, from the big emotions of "Reverie" to the big sneer of "Fragile" to the big ... well, it's all big, basically, especially the omnipresent squalls of guitars that go to 11. It's pretty big fun too, especially the sleek, aggressive vixen act of "Tap That," with McCauley declaiming her own irresistibility with tongue-in-cheek bravado.