Remember the sound of the pavement/ World turned upside down/ City street unlined and empty/ Not a soul around/ Life goes away in a flash right before your eyes/ If I think real hard well I reckon/ I've had some real good times.
--"Some Lessons," Melody Gardot

With a cane and dark glasses, Melody Gardot is neither inconspicuous nor fleet of foot. But she moves with confidence, makes it look like she belongs here in this upscale Center City hotel. She leads a small expedition — her mother, this reporter and a photographer — through the cavernous lobby and over to the shiny bank of elevators. Nobody says a word.

At the end of a posh hallway on the top floor, in front of a panoramic wall of windows, sits a shiny black baby grand piano. A small parade of suits with afternoon cocktails exits the elevators and gives nary a glance before disappearing around the corner into the ballroom.

Mostly, though, this is Gardot's little secret, a quiet place the young singer-songwriter used to sneak off to before the accident.

Two years ago, she was 19, living in Queen Village and studying fashion at Community College of Philadelphia. One day while riding her bike in Old City, she was struck by a Jeep making an illegal turn. The effects were devastating. Her pelvis was shattered in two places and a spinal injury left her with myriad and strange symptoms. Her debut EP, Some Lessons, recounts the daily struggles and changing worldview which accompanied her gradual, possibly endless, recovery.

"Why do the hands of time so easily unwind?" she ponders over gentle, jazzy guitar. On to the torchy, ruminating chorus: "Some lessons we learn the hard way." Her voice is warm and weighty, hinting at a maturity born not of mileage but of burden and experience. She sings like an older woman because she feels like one.

Her laundry list of medical ailments is so long and so multifaceted, you wonder how she had the strength — or desire — to make music at all.

The pelvic injury means she needs the cane to get around, and can't sit in one place for very long. She finds she has to stretch several times a day, so she's always got her yoga mat with her. "I'm still not the stair master, but I'm working on it," says the upbeat, energetic Gardot.

Also very debilitating to the young songwriter is her hearing problem, one of many symptoms of what doctors believe is an autonomic nervous system dysfunction. "It's not that I can't hear, it's that I hear too well," she explains. "I can't get the background in the background."

The accident also left her with increased photosensitivity — "It's like looking at heaven all the time" — hence the dark shades she never takes off. "It's hard to keep your spirits up when you're in this low light," she admits. "I love the sun but I can't deal with it."

Most troublingly, Gardot suffers from short-term memory losses. She laughs at the situation: Some days she may accidentally eat three apples or brush her teeth four times, not remembering that she's already done it. She takes care to write down her song ideas in notebooks and on Post-its. Members of her band (she plays with a quiet guitar-bass-drums trio) have had to remind her how her own songs go.

"It's kind of like being an old person," she says without a sigh. "I'm a project. I'm not easy."

Pretty much from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, she finds herself sitting before one kind of doctor or another. All have scratched their heads at her condition. It's two years on from the accident and progress has been slow. Where conventional medicine has come up short, she's exploring other options: macrobiotic cooking, homeopathic remedies, Reiki, aromatherapy. "I've seen a lot of rolled eyes," she says. "It's been a big scavenger hunt."

A thin white cord seems to tether Gardot to her purse, but really it's the TENS (Transcutaneous Electro-Nerve Stimulator) unit inside. That device uses electric pulses to distract her body from pain. "Everybody thinks it's an iPod," she laughs. "I have to turn it off at shows because it makes my guitar go b-z-z-z-t."

As you may imagine, the difficulties associated with live performances do not end there. Gardot has a show booked in Baltimore on the night of this interview. She's due to take the stage at 8, but she and her mom will hit the road at 1, allowing for frequent stops to stretch and deal with the overstimulation and noise that come along with the long car ride.

Typically she spends the day before a concert resting and mentally preparing herself. Hours before she takes the stage she sits in the car, meditating to calm her nerves. Being in a loud bar could lead to migraines, tinnitus or blackouts. As usual, she tends to look on the bright side. "It keeps me away from people I don't want to be around. If people are loud and obnoxious I literally can't be around them."

Right now, as an up-and-comer, she's doing all this prep for 20- or 30-minute sets. She's excited about forthcoming gigs opening for Jeffrey Gaines and David Poe. She figures she can get it together enough for about two shows a month.

Some Lessons has the tongue-in-cheek subtitle The Bedroom Sessions, since she recorded it at home in recovery. "It's not about confidence. It's about putting it out there," she says. "It's involuntary. I guess it's my way of dealing."

Upstairs in that hotel, she sits at the piano and starts to play "Momma," a pleading, haunting ballad. It starts with a twinkle and she hunches her body over the keys. Her right foot pumps a pedal and her hands move in waves. Conventioneers get off the elevators and stop for just a second to watch this young woman belting out "Momma what's going on" at the end of the hallway.

"Give me a snifter," cracks Gardot between lines — a nod to her days playing at piano bars like Tiramisu off South Street when she was 16. When the music moves her, she brushes her hand up to dislodge an earplug so she can better hear herself.

Eventually somebody from the ballroom calls security, and a guy comes around to politely kick us out. "It's not the first time," Gardot says with a smile. Mom retrieves the earplug from the carpet.

Is Gardot holding out hope for a total recovery? "I'm holding out hope for acceptance," she says. "It's like being a totally different person. The hard part is finding out who that is."

Ever since she got out of the hospital she's been living with her parents in South Jersey. Her pursuit of a degree in fashion has been put on hold, maybe forever. When she's not fighting to get her health back, she's writing letters and filing appeals to keep her insurance. The Jeep driver's coverage ran out almost right away and her own policy has threatened to drop her, or limit visits.

"If you want something bad enough you have to keep kicking until you get it," she says. "It makes you a rock. There's nothing to hold me except my body going "you can't walk.' There's nothing the world can throw at me."

Melody Gardot plays Fri., May 13, 8:30 p.m., $10, with Josh Komorowski and Seth Kallen, Tin Angel, 20 S. Second St., 215-928-0978.

Melody Gardot
Some Lessons: The Bedroom Sessions
(self-released)
It's a trick of alchemy that awful pain and uncertainty can give rise to such bold and striking music. In desperate ballads ("Wicked Ride") and smoky blues songs ("Don’t You Worry Baby"), Philly-area singer-songwriter Melody Gardot finds the universal in her experiences and makes the most of a few well-chosen words. Occasional swells of background vocals and string arrangements rise up to lend angelic support, a throwback to lush, Cole Porter-style jazz-pop. But Some Lessons is more often a sparse affair that recalls her piano bar days, her rich range accompanied by little more than a tender guitar or a stormy piano. Mature beyond her 21 years, Gardot has mostly skipped the trappings of piano-pop cliche and aimed for something more poised and ambitious.