Once upon a time, I wrote a column http://www.shebytches.com/pixiesaysapril182004.html about a difficult visit with the older of my two younger brothers, a musician and all-round computer expert who was going through a hard time. Not only do I have to retract – or at least reconfigure – my take on him, but I have to say that he’s kind of becoming my hero. Not only is he a musician of two kinds – downtempo electronica DJ J_level and singer-songwriter Dougle – but he almost shocked me out of the car this week with the announcement that his considerable record collection is filling up with female singer-songwriters.

Well. You could have knocked me down with a Lilith Fair ticket. My brother, listening to Regina Spektor, Wallis Bird and the Breeders. In the car, on a Friday night. Is he turning into me? He even mentioned that he wanted to get Ani Difranco’s new album – ironic, as the previous brother-wrangling column used Ani to try to get to the bottom of my frustration with him. It also reminded me that when he came to visit, I tried to drag him out to hear and hook up with various Toronto musos. He made it, miserably, to one open-mic night but that was it. In particular, he missed out on Lysa Fina, Toronto’s answer to Patti Smith, Diamanda Galas and Lucinda Williams all having a really, really bad day and a really, really great night at the same time.

I’ve been a fan of Lysa since she first ventured out to open mics at Queen West dives and I’d dragged dozens of people along to have their hearts stopped by her whiskey and worn leather voice through every interation of band, two girls with guitars, and Lysa alone on stage with her ballgown and guitar. Acoustic, electric, a cappella. I’ve heard it all. I even read with her at one gig at the Big Bop, wishing I had some luscious licks to back up my words once she came on stage and blew me out of the water.

But I was cool with that, lost in the live experience of her reverberating voice. If there’s any woman who’s not going to be making a symphony out of swallowing her own tongue, it’s Lysa Fina. Many are the times that I’ve used (or wished I’d used) lines from her songs as self-deprecating kiss-offs – they’re never quite a kick in the teeth because of their vulnerability and poetry. Her songs are like the ones that would have been written by the woman in “Fairytale of New York” if she hadn’t handed her dreams over to Shane MacGowan.

Many of her songs are about taking back her mind and heart from obsession, possession and passion. They’re intimate in the way body cavities and wet dreams are, not Oprah confessions. Some are so quiet you have to sit with your ear to the speaker, perfect for the iPod on the night bus home, watching your tear-streaked reflection in the rainy window. Others are loud like your heartbeat when you wake from a nightmare or laughter when you’re with your best girl friends. She’s a trouper and a troubadour, wordly wise and heartworn, like the Storyteller if Angela Carter had written that series instead of Anthony Minghella.

Telling her fairytales on “Fairytale,” http://cdbaby.com/cd/lysafina, she resonates with the great Canadian tradition of singer-songwriters (and has recorded on tribute albums to Neil Young and Leonard Cohen) but the goth-rock chick with dyed black hair and a sense of drama is there in the spaces between the piano notes. When she’s singing quietly on “drunk kisses” with just piano chords and a jazz saxophone that’s strayed from an Edward Hopper painting, you can feel the raw power being held in abeyance. It’s hungover music where last night’s whooping it up and tomorrow’s grief is audible in the swell of the long, low notes she sings. Never has “you’re gonna love me” seemed like such a threat as when it’s whispered on “the fall.”

And that’s why I wanted my brother to hear her five years ago – and why he couldn’t have. Every single male friend I took to see Lysa found her terrifying. They said it was the operatic scale of her voice, but I think it was more that this huge voice was opening up a vortex of need, of vulnerability, instead of screaming punk “Fuck Yous.” Like the great women blues singers, the depth and colours of Lysa’s voice announce a strength that dares to find itself in pain. “Fairytale” offers its own answer to Freud’s question, “What do women want?” and it’s scarier, darker, richer and subtler than the bearded Viennese doctor could ever have imagined. But he would have found himself mesmerised, listening to the twists and turns of the song’s desire, just like all those guys who found Lysa terrifying. And, strangely enough, found themselves back at her next gig, thrilling to her power to open them up to something new, “getting comfortable with coming undone,” as she suggests on “surrender.”

So I’m sending my bro a link to Lysa’s MySpace page: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=79429313. Because if he’s looking for the qualities that female singer-songwriters bring to the biz, then he’ll find them here in abundance, along with that fairytale something more in the stories she tells: a princess who finds out she’s really a goose girl, a plucky heroine rescuing herself from having to marry the prince, a woman who knows that making dark, plangent music is the best – the only – route to happily ever after.