“You’re not fooling with a half-cocked kid,” warns Melissa Sigler in the lyrics of “Be Happy Blue,” from her second album Secrets. And indeed, Sigler, who’s been touted as Louisiana’s answer to Marcia Ball, has the piano chops, the deep-throated microphone presence, and the world-weary songwriter stance that distinguishes her from anyone’s idea of a neophyte.

The Marcia Ball comparison is just a way of describing her as a distaff blues pianist, because Sigler has a style all her own. One that’s still emerging, but a fascinating one nonetheless.

The sound on Secrets is—fittingly, given the title—darker and quieter than her year 2000 debut, No Way Out. The entire sound (a fairly straight blues-rock) is airbrushed slightly, so much so that even a rocking fiddle track like “Zydeco” seems cushioned, yet there’s an urgency bubbling under it all that Sigler’s vocals and lyrics are left to deliver to the top. And as a member of the Louisiana Songwriters’ Association who hosts a songwriters’ night in her native Lake Charles, Melissa has no problem telling you exactly what’s on her mind. The cheerily ironic “Poor Me” is a laundry list of things she’ll get to do now that her love has gone, while the title track makes love sound like the dirtiest, most shameful of revelations.

Sigler’s piano gets dwarfed in the mix sometimes, and the regional color gets a little too blinding on eager-to-please travelogues like “Zydeco” and “Back To The Bayou,” but that’s a rather common failing for such an uncommon singer/songwriter, and she demonstrates every ability to cast out clichés when she’s at full power, so that problem will likely work itself out in time. Melissa Sigler may be a secret herself to most of the music industry, but if she keeps traveling this dark road so well, she won’t be one for long.