Young Canadian singer-songwriter Annabelle Chvostek performed two sets at the weekend and showed that she can win hearts and minds on her own.

    Her songs are as varied in character as her singing – powerful in a lower register and ethereal on top.

    She opened on mandolin before switching to guitar for the Velvet Underground cover Some Kinda Love, where every phrase counted. Ella Jenkins's Racing With The Sun injected an Afro-American element into the stylistic spectrum.

    At times, Chvostek's bright-eyed fervour recalled an older generation of folk singers. That went for Equal Rights, by ill-fated Jamaican musician Peter Tosh, as well as a new song about the violent response to protesters at the G-20 summit in Toronto.

    Taking up her fiddle in set two, Chvostek suggested the oppressiveness of "colonial blue" with another self-penned piece called The Sioux. Her lilting chorus had the audience warbling along.

    So did the pop-music hook of I Left My Brain, from studio album Resilience, whose title song made a lovely finale. After that, Chvostek fairly rocked in her first encore and withdrew into some joyous old-time with Lazy John.

Peter Palmer