Listening to Jenn Grant is like looking at a painting.

Like simple, static strokes of the brush on canvas, Grant's music is neither intrusive nor insistent and offers a little something different with each listen. Perhaps it's the Halifax-based (though native of PEI) singer/songwriter's tenure at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in painting (she also designs her own album covers) that spurs such comparisons, but the romantically expressive nature of both is undeniable.

My first introduction to Grant was at Toronto's Rivoli in December 2008 when she opened for Waterloo, Ont. rocker Danny Michel, one of my long-time favourites. While I was poised to see him for the umpteenth time, something spoke to me when I saw Grant emerge to prime the crowd. She was tiny, with striking orange hair, and hazel eyes. And when she opened her mouth, I fell for her.

While I'd presumed her to be timid by appearance, I should have read the spitfire stereotype in her curls. With just a guitar, she played charming folk to a candlelit room, stopping only to serve slices of droll humor in anecdotes describing her songs. I could tell this girl had a bit of edge.

By the following February, Grant was ready to release Echoes, her followup to 2007's Orchestra for the Moon. The release features a cohesive collection of songs with folk instrumentation including landscape-making violins and viola, plus accordion and bass clarinet.

But Echoes is punctuated by Grant's signature vocals. At times deeper and demure, she travels quickly to her highest register without hesitation, revealing unexpected strength. Outside of lyrics, she also uses her voice to add an extra instrument, most markedly on Sailing By Silverships, where, half-way through the song, she starts off a repeated ascension of four notes before launching into a freeing vocal exploration of her range.

The songs also evoke a certain sense of natural imagery, to accompany the mountains Grant painted on the album cover for Echoes. While it's contained in the lyrics throughout, the sensation is matched by the thin texture of the music, which allows easy identification of its elements, offering a somewhat natural tangibility.

It wasn't long before I was able to catch Grant live for a second time. Shortly following her album's release, she shared Toronto's Reverb stage with labelmates Amelia Curran, Wendy McNeill and Melissa McClelland at the "Ladies of Six Shooter" series during Canadian Music Week in March.

Maybe to complement the magnitude of the event, she brought a six-piece backing band and was joined by the Halifax namesake behind Ruth Minnikin and her Bandwagon, who offered backing vocals. The full-band generated a significantly more textured sound and energetic show than Grant could have possibly provided by herself. I predicted it wouldn't be long before she'd outgrow the Reverb.

Music aside, Grant has personality to fill a room. When she recently played Outlaws and Gunslingers, a series for the North by Northeast music festival at Lee's Palace in Toronto, she was the hostess of her set, in which she alternated performing songs with Jason Plumb and Barenaked Ladies' Kevin Hearn. Charmingly bold, she would play with the boys accompanying her, who mostly buckled to her wit. So I wasn't surprised when I saw her pop up on CBC Radio 3's R3TV podcast to host the segment 'Awkward Interviews with Jenn Grant'. On the streets of Toronto, a pleasantly brash Grant couldn't help but smile at the camera during responses by the drunk and deluded when she shoved a microphone in their face to talk about the festival.

With an ever-growing panache and a canon that improves with each live performance, Jenn Grant is beginning to take shape as one of Canada's finest emerging female artists. And it's with no hesitation I foresee, to take a title from one of Grant's own, You'll Go Far.

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