Singer/songwriter Ana Lola Roman wants in your head

Ana Lola Roman wants you to be uncomfortable.

The Brooklyn, N.Y.-based avant garde singer/songwriter aims for her listeners to be on edge so they’re in the right frame of mind, she said.

“I’m not interested in people standing around, drinking their vodka tonic and going ‘Yeah!’ ” she said. “I’m just trying to get people away from the reality television and have them come out and see some music that’s thought-provoking.”

Roman’s introduction to the piano at age 6 sparked a slow-burning creative drive. She was writing songs two years later, but the real flood didn’t hit until much later.

Roman landed in New York for college, escaping her home in Choctaw, Okla., a suburban vortex where any hope of performing would have died a slow death, she said.

After the events of Sept. 11, 2001, rocked the city, a well of pent-up energy and frustration with “stupidity and closemindedness” finally burst, she said.

“I had all this fermentation and energy inside me for a while, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do,” she said. “Finally, I just took all the songs out and started performing them.

“It all came to fruition slowly and painfully and wonderfully.”

Roman’s off-center style combines a warbling voice set above aggressive, staccato piano-driven melodies accompanied by drum fill courtesy of Tim Stevens, formerly of the math-rock band Table.

Tonight, she’ll join fellow New Yorkers Aquila and the Huntsville-based Kabuki surf-rock band Daikaiju for a triple bill at Barking Legs Theater.

That crowd should be a welcome change from the Big Apple’s scene, Roman said.

“I’m hoping these people are able to listen and be provoked a little bit and to have some fun,” she said. “In the long run, I just want them to dance and sing and to have fun and to get away from the television.”