Ana Porter's songs are so melodically rich, so lyrically evocative that it's impossible to believe she once despised music.

"When I was 5 years old, my mother forced me to take piano lessons, and I hated it," recalls Porter, the daughter of conductor and music teacher Susan Tall. "After less than a year, she let me stop, and I thought, 'Good, I'm glad I'll never have to have anything to do with music again!' "

But music eventually caught up with Porter, or the other way around. By her early teens, she was taking lessons from her mother and singing in the choir at Tenafly High School in northern New Jersey. Later, while at Brown University, Porter studied classical guitar, voice, and theory, and began to entertain the idea of a musical career.

She moved to Seattle in the mid-'90s to start a Web-design business. In 1999, a dot-com job lured her to San Francisco, where she launched her career in earnest.

In the Bay Area, Porter connected with songwriting teacher Bonnie Hayes, best-known for authoring the Bonnie Raitt hits "Have a Heart" and "Love Letter." In addition to tutoring Porter in the art of songwriting, Hayes also produced the artist's eponymous, self-released EP.

A set of startling originality and impressive scope, Porter's disc opens with the searing rocker "You Win," which describes a confrontation between two lovers. Then, on the Middle Eastern-flavored "Gypsy," Porter reflects on what she calls the "undeserved riches" of the dot-com boom by making word play with the title ("I outgypped the Gypsy; I outfooled the fool").

Porter is currently playing Bay Area venues with a band featuring drummer Fred Wolford, guitarist Jeff Nix, and bassist Joe Horner.