Alison Sudol has a ways to go before she's given the iconic status of artists like Fiona Apple and Tori Amos, two of the singer-songwriters she's often compared to. Still, there are signs that the piano-playing 22-year-old is already touching people in a way that leads to a following of hard-core disciples as opposed to casual listeners. When Sudol–who performs as A Fine Frenzy–plays live, she often makes her way to the merch table afterward to meet her audience face to face. The flame-haired chanteuse admits that it's not unusual for fans to find themselves speechless. That's something Sudol has no problem relating to. After lining up for an hour recently to meet director Wes Anderson and actor Jason Schwartzman at a Borders bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she was dumbstruck when it came time to think of something intelligent to say.

"I'm, like, the most insane Wes Anderson fan–his films are pretty much my inner landscapes," Sudol says, on the line from a Milwaukee tour stop. "I just love him to pieces. So I was buying the soundtrack to his new movie, The Darjeeling Limited, when the guy behind the counter told me that Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman were coming to do a signing and a Q&A. I had a flip-out moment. I finally understood why people want to stand in line."

You don't have to be a registered therapist to get a feel for why A Fine Frenzy's debut disc, One Cell in the Sea, has registered with Paxil poppers. Something of a loner while growing up, Sudol spent more time immersed in the writings of Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis than she did hanging out at the mall in her hometown of Los Angeles. Based on One Cell's lush, dramatic, and undeniably accomplished songs, she's clearly been through a rough patch or two since then. The practically whispered ballad "Almost Lover" finds her ruminating on one that got away in her younger years, while the symphonic celestial rocker "You Picked Me" has her hiding out in a cabin while the dark world rages outside. What prevents Sudol from being more depressing than Morrissey on a rain-soaked Sunday is that her songs are inevitably more melancholy than maudlin, the message being that there's always hope no matter how bleak things might seem.

"I can be very pessimistic and very dark, but there is also a part of me that's very determinedly optimistic," she says. "Even when my every inclination is to be otherwise, I don't want to live my life on the dark side of things. Sometimes that takes a little bit of effort, and when that's the case music is the way that I totally make sense of things."

That's how Sudol copes with times like, for example, the one when she found herself standing in front of her favourite director without anything to say. Luckily, Schwartzman had not only heard One Cell in the Sea, but was impressed enough by its self-assured fusion of soft-paisley pop, Lady Day jazz, and baroque-tinted MOR that he remembered it.

"I was standing there like a doofus," Sudol says, "and the Borders manager goes, 'I want to introduce you to a special person–she's A Fine Frenzy.' So Jason goes, 'I totally know you, they're playing your music all over L.A. and it's great.' I said 'Thank you,' and then looked at Wes Anderson and went, 'You”¦umm”¦I”¦umm”¦aaaahhhh. Umm, sign my album?' Yes, sadly, that was the best I could do."

A Fine Frenzy opens for Brandi Carlile at the Commodore on Saturday (October 27).