When Sonia Tetlow started playing around town, doing raw and nervy songs with an acoustic guitar, she got told she was too rock for folk and too folk for rock. To some extent that’s been the story of her career. Her current album Now is a full-fledged rock set, but the songs remain raw and nervy, with a personal detail snuck into every catchy chorus hook.

“I don’t know any other way of doing it,” she says. “That’s the kind of writer I am. I’d say that 90 percent of the time it’s fro...