If the title of this EP makes it sound like it’s going to be a nice little acoustic session, guess again. In all her years doing folk and acoustic music, Beth Patterson has always dropped hints that she’s a rocker at heart—though her occasional Rush covers are hard hints to miss. Some of her rocker side came out on her recent Singles compilation, and she turns it fully loose on this EP. Whatever that guitar is, it makes a pretty mighty sound.

The surprise is the amount of self-examination that’s evinced in the lyrics: she gets in a few hard-won insights but characteristically couches them in clever one-liners (“The one at every party that they never did invite/ But I chose to crash them anyway, just pure and utter spite”). “Feather in My Wing” says a lot about long-term friendships and the phases they go through, and “Magic for Myself” reminds me of the McCartney/Costello song “You Want Her Too” in that it’s a duet with the singer’s inner voice. The latter is voiced wonderfully by Lena Prima, who also co-wrote it.

But as noted, it also rocks. The opening “Siren” is the disc’s heaviest track, and a rather exhilarating one: Rush is definitely in there (there’s a bass solo), but so are the Ramones, with the guitars being goosed along by Roddy Ory’s ride cymbal. And Patterson does a full-throated blues-rock turn on “Mine,” with the ubiquitous Josh Paxton on Hammond. The lyrics make it clear what she thinks of narcissists, but she’s also clearly having fun playing the role. After all, you can always get away with being a little evil on a rock ’n’ roll set.