The world hasn’t yet heard Jennifer O’Connor’s recordings on “Over the Mountain, Across the Valley, and Back to the Stars” due out on Matador this fall, but if her previous release on Red Panda records, “The Color and the Light,” is any indication, we’ll be privy to some pretty, simple poetry, some storytelling, and thoughtful singer/songwriter composing when her whirlwind year brings her to the Red Door on Monday, April 24.

“I told you that I wanted to be like the color and the light / Fillin’ up everything with the brightest kind of bright,” she croons in the title song, with intentional pouted lips over a slow yet driving beat, relentless with the patience to let the words live in all the right places of the song. Tori Amos comes to mind, as well as perhaps an unwound Ani Difranco or a female Bob Dylan.

Gerard Cosloy, co-president of Matador Records, offers insight into what qualities his label sees in O’Connor and why they showcased her at the South by Southwest festival in Austin last month.

“Jennifer’s songs are fantastic. We thought so the first we heard ’em and thought so even harder when we saw her play in person. If we think about it even harder, it’s gonna be like ‘Scanners,’ I promise you.
“I’m not sure what sort of ‘qualities’ we’re being asked about,” he continues. “The insistence that great art be quantified and categorized is a small part of what’s making the modern world so dopey. Hearing Jennifer take the art of songcraft into a better space, however, is pretty good consolation.”

With personal muses like Bob Dylan, Elliot Smith and David Berman of the Silver Jews, O’Connor moves back and forth between autobiography and poetic commentary with ease.

“I worked on (the new record) like it was my job. I created a deadline for myself,” O’Connor says in a telephone interview of the effort to push out the record according to Matador’s suggestions. “I’m anxious to put out something that a lot of people will be able to hear.”

In 1996, she picked up a bass for the first time ever to play in a friend’s band. He showed her how to play their songs, and it wasn’t long before she picked up the guitar and began writing her own.

“I don’t feel like I have become proficient yet, actually. I feel completely humbled by the guitar,” she says. “But I love my relationship to it and how there is always more to learn.”

The new album will take listeners to a very dark year, gracefully navigated by O’Connor.  The end of a long-term relationship and the death of someone close to her fueled this record and propelled it to its completion.

“Last year was a turbulent year for me, so I wasn’t really searching for things to write about. It kinda coincided well with the fact that I needed to write a record,” she said. “I don’t always write only from personal experience, but those tend to be the times you want to write more. It was a bumpy, bumpy year.”

O’Connor is a largely self-motivated music fan and musician. Prior to all this hoopla with labels and touring, her interest in music made her an avid listener to the top 40 countdown every Sunday. She took notes so she could go buy the records she liked. Then, it was a time for a little private rock show.

“I used to sing in the garage with my brother’s microphone very badly at the top of my lungs to whatever records we had in the house,” she says.

Until recently, O’Connor didn’t know that her great grandmother was a singer. Her mother is a painter and her father works in real estate. Her brother played some piano when they were younger, and she took lessons as well, but quit early on. Without any direct influence from family members, O’Connor’s new lifestyle in the music business spooked her parents at first.

“They’re getting used to the idea,” she says.

O’Connor has forgone working a day job. She lives in Brooklyn, doing some promotional work for bars and venues and selling records and CDs online.

“I hustle so I don’t have to work and, so, I’m poor,” she said. “But I’m flexible with my time which is what I wanted. I can go tour whenever I need to.”

Jennifer O’Connor w/Choo Choo La Rouge and The Divorsed
Monday, April 24
The Red Door, 107 State St., Portsmouth
$5 at the door