Sinéad Sanders is like a ghost from a simpler time on her nine-song debut, which, given the wretched state of the world today, is seriously high praise.

What you get is roots music stripped down and raw, catching the Vancouver open-mike vet live from the floor with nothing but her acoustic guitar.

From the lonesome-town ballad “It’s a Sin” to the rollicking bluegrass-tinted “All My Records On”, Sanders comes on like a real-deal old-country rebel from a world where jukeboxes are stocked with Molly O’Day, Lydia Mendoza, and Hazel Dickens. Except that even those greats never sounded as captivatingly world-weary as Sanders does on the everything-sucks-today “Coca-Cola”.

It’s one thing to sing a line like “Whatever world you live in/It’s not the one that I’m in.” The genius thing here is that Sanders sounds like she really means it.