Toronto band Inna Powell’s debut does not just introduce the words and music of a talented young songwriter, it announces them, shouts it like gospel, forces you to listen, you too, yeah you, grips you by the neck with its confidence, its clarity, its vision. This is music that cannot be denied. This is music that is sometimes brash, sometimes beautiful, but always, at its core, vulnerable and naked and bare. This is Inna Powell. The opener, “I Know You Pray To God,” is indie folk meditation on faith and family, or maybe the lack thereof, and though it’s hardly religious it’s got a heckuva hook repeating throughout like the responsorial psalms at a Sunday service. It’s Inna Powell as preacher, with a vocal performance clear and captivating, delivered like a sermon. Then the full band arrives with the chorus, triumphantly, and you throw yer hands in the air, join the congregation. “Helping Put You Dress On” is sensual and sexual with a slick lick and a deep bass groove and a vocal that somehow seems both confident and shy all at once. It melds jazzy drums and a haunting organ into a soundtrack for the night: dark, sly, mysterious; it’s the sound of the curiosity that takes over when the lights turn off. “The Vanishing Act” opens with banjos and guitars plucking and picking a four-chord pattern that gallops with urgency like horses in a Wild West train robbery. But it is no mere cowboy cliché: in comes the band; the violins shriek their lonesome mourn; the drums pump out a steady hip hop beat; the lyrics get spit out with unexpected rhymes and undeniable power. Then the chorus hits, and it is clear this is the full realization of one young man reckoning with who he is and where he is and why he is and when he is, taking all he has seen and done and distilling it down into this, his statement, his song. This is not just the set’s best track: it is Inna Powell standing on a soapbox that he built himself, with his bare hands, over many years, speaking what he needs to say in the way he needs to say it. Like Dylan’s “Rolling Stone” or Kurt’s “Teen Spirit,” this is his anthem. The EP ends with “When I Was Younger,” a quiet and restrained but painfully beautiful track. With gorgeously subtle fingerpicked acoustic and lyrics delivered in a murmur so quivering you can hear the tears trying desperately to be held back. Inna Powell delivers the kind of performance that can only come from one who has loved and lost; it is the sound of true pain. Examining the tragedy of a life gone far too soon, this song will shatter your heart. Inna Powell calls this The Vanishing Act, but like the work of any great magician the name is only a distraction; by the time you think you’re seeing the trick the sleight-of-hand has already happened. This is no disappearance. It is the exact opposite. He is here, fully realized. This is an appearance. This is Inna Powell. - Written by Ryan Gaio