Serena Ryder gives dazzling performance for small Pour House crowd

When she was 15-years-old, Serena Ryder earned a record deal with Canadian-based label Mime Radio and cut her first album, "Falling Out," in 1999. The Canadian-born songstress spent the next six years sharpening her talents and carving out a niche for herself as one of the brightest and most talented singer/songwriters of her time.

Following the release of her fourth and latest album, "is it o.k.," Ryder won her second Juno Award, this time for "Adult Alternative Album of the Year," and has been seen as the opening act for such acts as Steve Earle, Aerosmith and Cheap Trick.

But it's her smaller shows that seem to capture the true significance of Ryder's abilities the most. Such was the case Saturday night when Ryder performed before a small crowd at The Pour House.

With her three-octave vocal range resonating throughout the venue, the 50 or so audience members seemed to shuffle to the stage in a bewildered,

awe-inspired trance that began and ended with every song.

What became most clear during Ryder's performance is just how powerfully captivating raw musical talent paired with intelligent songwriting can be. With Ryder, you don't just hear her songs, you feel them.

Ryder possesses the rare ability to write deceptively simple songs with a poetically blue collar and a soulful-pop contagiosity that all collides into one, wildly evocative song collection.

Ryder is at the beginning of a great swell in a career that finally seems to be ready to break through. There are easy comparisons, Melissa Etheridge in particular, but in Ryder comes something all her own.

There is a connection to her songs that one can see in her face when she sings them. It's a look that imitates the song's story as if Ryder is re-living the experience all over again, an admirable feat considering it's a feeling that can only occur when an artist has been completely honest. And it's that kind of sincerity and candor that makes Ryder's performances so absorbing.

The 25-year-old took the time to tell her audience the story behind every song and thanked the small gathering for coming on a number of occasions before closing out her hour-long set with a passionate performance of her a capella song "Melancholy Blue."

"I wrote this song while I was waiting on this (expletive) at a bar, a really cute (expletive), though. He never showed up but I got this song out of it," Ryder joked before beginning the song. By the time she finished, the crowd was left jaw-dropped and well-satisfied with a performance from an artist truly deserving of all the success certain to come her way.