Amy Macdonald Puts Sacred Cows on Notice

She's set to follow Amy Winehouse and Duffy as the next big thing out of Britain (where her debut has scored double-platinum status), but Amy Macdonald isn't part of the young retro-soul scene that's bringing back the Motown sound. In fact, this 20-year-old Scottish firebrand revives an older artifact: the confrontational coffeehouse folk that Bob Dylan brought to Greenwich Village in the early '60s.

Old music is the only thing of age Macdonald respects. On “This Is the Life," over plangent acoustic guitars that occasionally work up to a foot-stomping frenzy, she takes aim at sacred cows both small and large: Opener “Mr. Rock and Roll" mocks a networking pop star with a hollow heart, while “Youth of Today" questions the motives of anyone more experienced than Macdonald and her pals. In “L.A.," she casts off a longtime fascination with an unspecified Hollywood heartthrob and claims, “I don't need no one else."

Thanks to her knack for a bouncy tune, as well as a pretty voice that recalls that of her countrywoman KT Tunstall, Macdonald's brash pronouncements rarely buckle under the weight of her bitterness. Like Dylan, she knows that you can't change someone's mind until you get them to listen.