DRESSED IN A T-shirt and scruffy jeans, Jenn Ghetto, who performs under the moniker "S," squinted to survey the crowd from the Graceland stage. Visibly quaking, she adjusted her guitar strap, quavered, "Sure are a lot of people in here," and hesitantly launched into a short, stunning set of songs crumbling with the weight of unblinking, honest heartbreak.

The assembled crowd was comprised of the kinds of tough music fans with the patience to appreciate bands on a label such as Thrill Jockey (Chicago Underground Duo and Isotope 217 headlined), but who are predisposed toward making sharp judgments and never-look-back assumptions. It could have been daunting for a girl and her electric guitar, unknown to many, making what was only her second appearance as a solo artist. Normally, she's flanked by her bandmates in Carissa's Wierd, a group that appears equally unsure of itself on stage, but by sheer strength of numbers--and a whole stageful of talent--manages to play show after show of quietly crashing perfection. That the audience stood rapt and silent throughout Ghetto's set was nothing short of shocking, and its wild applause at the end visibly took Ghetto and her friends by surprise. No sound more explosive than a whisper had been heard over her breathy, fragmented stories set to blustery guitar, each one deceptively sparse but laden with quick tempo changes and shifts from one emotion to another. In Ghetto's lyrical mind, love is something to be attained but not trusted, and blackened hearts rejuvenate and become lush with green hope as soon as the tiniest promise of potential presents itself again. Desperation breeds contempt in others, but loneliness nurtures contempt for the self. "Why do we act so humble when we're all just hung up on ourselves?" she asks. Then, "Why do I act so humble? Guess I'll just keep that to myself."

You get the feeling from listening to Sadstyle, Ghetto's recent debut on Brown Records, that the songs included were never really meant to be heard by anyone, let alone a collective public ear--that perhaps Ghetto was committing to four-track tape a kind of therapeutic bloodletting. Audibly, it's a visceral release that sounds pure and unedited, the uninterrupted thoughts and perfectly formed logic that come from one-sided conversations and arguments with yourself. (The album's liner notes reveal the songs were recorded in her bedroom between 1997 and 1999.)

It's a contemplative record, and she previews its prevailing tone on the opening track "Try," with its swaying directive, "Watch it all go by." "See Through Me" gallops along steadily and Ghetto's vocals threaten to get ahead of themselves as she navigates her own fickle heart. On its heels comes the shrouded loveliness of "The Waltz," which wrings then spills out an unspoken emotion that underlies the lyrics at hand. Vocal layers further obscure the theme before the tone shifts and there is a sense of clarity in her vision: "I've been waiting for so long." It's a journey that Ghetto brings her listeners on, but she's not going to provide a travel plan for anyone coming along. "I wore that shirt that you gave me but I thought about someone else, and I guess it all comes back in the end 'cause now I hear we're just friends" ("R.R.").

One of the many stand-out tracks on Sadstyle, "I Love You Too...," finds Ghetto contemplating the unattainable, sighing, "Just say I love you sweetheart, I'll be yours tonight," before conjuring in the listener the image of a tearstained face turning toward a pillow as Ghetto methodically repeats, "It's not love at all, it's not love at all." The melody dances sadly, swaying and twirling and changing partners vocally as the layers and verses trade characters. It's part lullaby, part love song, and entirely mesmerizing in its dreaminess.

This is anything but girl-and-her-guitar folksy musings. The bravado with which Ghetto's thoughts are delivered has a palatably masculine forthrightness but is tempered with the inherent femininity of her subjects' brittle beauty. Ghetto's voice vacillates somewhere between a plea and a mutter as her guitar deftly gallops, chimes, or stalls momentarily while her thoughts rear up on each other and positives become negatives. You get the feeling that she's a girl who knows you better than you know yourself, that quiet one in the corner who sees things clearer than most, but, like the rest of us, doesn't always apply that vision to her own life. And for that we are thankful, because human mistakes are what Sadstyle, and S, are all about.