According to Suzie Ungerleider, traditional American music -- old blues songs, country murder ballads and their ilk -- are perfect for teenage consumption. Really.

"When you're a teenager or you're into your 20s, you feel displaced -- and that whole music is about being displaced," says Ungerleider, a Toronto singer-songwriter who performs under the stage name Oh Susanna.

"People are very, very disturbed in that music. There's not a lot of happiness. I think it reflects adolescence very well."

She has a point. Ungerleider has taken her early passion for old-tyme American music and mythology and fed it into her own songs -- blood-soaked folk narratives, some haunting and some harrowing, all delivered with a striking Appalachian voice.

You can hear her music on two independently released CDs: 1997's Oh Susanna EP and this year's full-length Johnstown (produced by Peter Moore featuring the talents of Blue Rodeo bassist Basil Donovan and Wilco pedal steel player Bob Egan).

She's also performing tonight at the Engineered Air Theatre.

Amazingly, Underleider started writing songs just six years ago while studying history at Concordia University.

"That training completely matches what I'm doing now -- thinking about how human beings see things," she says.

"When I first started, I wanted to write more in the past. But as I go along, I want to write in a way you don't really know when it's taking place. It's more universal than historical."