Hawksley Workman has big expectations for pop music and for himself.

"I'm trying to make relatively high art," the gregarious 24-year-old musician says without a hint of arrogance or pretension.

So he's making "medium" art, then?

"Well, if high art is cruising at 40,000 feet above sea level in a private plane, then maybe I'm not there. But I run a commercial airline," he chuckles.

The Toronto-based singer-songwriter, who performs today at Mount Royal College's Liberty Lounge, can back up his boasts with an accessible yet wonderfully offbeat debut album, For Him and the Girls.

Tuneful and archly literate, this independently released 14-track CD moves effortlessly from flamboyant cabaret-pop to sleazy glam-rock and delicate folk, while Workman's fanciful, falsetto-prone voice sings of romance, commitment and lust.

His wordplay is intoxicating and ambiguous -- "There's not much else as sweet as this / I waved so hard I broke my wrist" -- but also refreshingly sincere and irony-free.

Which is no accident.

"Absolutely. My biggest criticism of pop culture right now is all the irony and smart-a--edness," Workman says.

"There's an immense responsibility for artists. You know, people can say: 'Oh, it's just rock and roll and it's not high art,' and probably, at the end of the day, that's absolutely true. But I don't think you can deny the power it has on people, whether it's high art or not.

"Anything beautiful or anything loving that you stand up for in your own truth and in your own honesty is now in question by the skeptics. That saddens me."

Although Workman apparently sprung out of nowhere, he's been writing music and learning the secrets of the recording studio since his early teens.

The experience came in handy on For Him And The Girls: A virtual one-man show, he wrote the songs, produced them in his eight-track home studio and played most of the instruments.

Not that he's a control freak or a perfectionist.

"I rarely labour over things in an arduous way," he says.

"I don't spend weeks on a stanza. I really love the flow of starting and finishing something. A lot of the songs were written and recorded the same day."

Others have tapped Workman's production skills, including musician pal John Southworth and Calgary duo Tegan and Sara, whose forthcoming debut disc on Neil Young's Vapor label was helmed by Workman.

"I'm not too technically minded," he says of his production skills, "but I do have a sense for what I really like."