Burn Witch Burn is what ex-Dead Milkman Rodney Anonymous did after his band broke up in 1994. They have carved out a distinct niche in Philadelphian musical circles with a style they call American Gothic. Performing on an odd assortment of traditional folk instruments (including tin whistle, mandolin, bouzouki and hurdy-gurdy) they play Celtic-oriented, homespun yarns about pedophiliac grandfathers, plagues and murdered children. In a very punk-rock way, Burn Witch Burn hijacks American folk music in an effort to shine a light into the dark corners of traditional American culture. I think their work is riveting. There is probably some sort of cultural archetype thing happening here, but all I know is that I had shivers throughout the album.

The strongest song here is "How Beth Found Fame". In Vienna Lindeman's siren voice, it tells the story of a fading beauty who, following an unfulfilling affair with a married man, walks out of her house only to be found dead in a field six weeks later, "Lying posed for the cameras…Smiling back at photographers." The song is chilling -- grittily brutal in both subject matter and presentation. It seems to come screaming out of a real headline from somewhere in America's heartland. Like, somewhere in a barber shop in Iowa someone might be whispering "Did you hear what happened to her? I heard they found her body in a field and she was lying posed for the cameras!" Other songs are almost as dark. "The Mayor's Story" speaks of an illness emanating from a strange coffin that appears in the center of town. It takes the children first and ends by killing every living thing within the walls of the city. "Painting the Furniture Black/Harvest Home" tells of a murderer of blind men and children who is captured by a mob and hanged. In "The Parson's Farewell" we hear of a parson who is to be lynched because he abandons "cast-off bastards", leaving them to "starve in the dust". Each of these songs tells of dark, almost unspeakable evil. They are truly chilling and yet somehow alluring, creating the same sort of dark fascination that keeps Jon Benet Ramsay's murder in the headlines.

Burn Witch Burn speaks to the most buried part of our psyche. It brazenly mentions things that are normally only whispered, as if voicing them too loudly would invite more evil. By setting stories like these to music, Burn Witch Burn might defy social convention, but they also delight us...even as they make us squirm.