Matthew Good is a strange fish - part creative genius, part a--hole.

The latter claim comes from his days with the Matthew Good Band, which he disbanded in 2002.

Always outspoken and, at times, a difficult personality, Good began to cash in on his personal reputation by selling T-shirts that said, 'I Hear Matthew Good Is A Real A--hole.'

Now a solo artist, Good has been wearing his heart on his sleeve and airing all his dirty laundry publicly, even crediting his acclaimed music to mental illness and personal struggle.

He's performing here tonight and tomorrow at the Myer Horowitz theatre where you can decided for yourself - stuffed shirt or tortured soul.

The Canadian rocker has been playing as a solo artist since 2002 and was in Edmonton recently to promote his latest and so far greatest album Hospital Music, which was released here on July 31. The Sun sat down with him at the Hotel Macdonald and chatted about old times, his life as an un-rock star and the personal difficulties, which inspired his latest record.

"It started with my separation," Good says, referring to his ex-wife who is nine years younger than him. "It was not the kind of thing where it was a mature occurrence. It was not the kind of thing where it was, 'Okay, let's seek counselling.' It was very much more akin to a Grade 9 occurrence where I was sitting at a cafeteria table eating lunch and your girlfriend comes up to you and says, 'Oh by the way, we're not going out anymore'. And that's how my marriage ended and because of that, it just left me in this huge vacuum holding all this baggage."

Good says insult was added to injury when his ex moved in with another man just five months later, so he packed up his personal belongings in storage, sent the rest to charity and moved in with his parents when his health took a turn for the worse.

"I have suffered from severe anxiety for years to the point where, for almost a decade, I passed out and that kind of thing. I started to get some kind of treatment for that in 2003 when I was put on medication for it, but what I didn't know was, unfortunately the medication I was put on actually caused manic symptoms in people who suffer from bipolarity to be exemplified," Good explains.

"One night, I guess my dad had just made dinner and we had a couple beers and I went upstairs with another beer and was watching a video on my laptop ... I took a couple of Ativan because I wanted to go to sleep and I didn't realize what I was doing anymore.

"It all created this bizarre state of mind and I guess what I did was, I just kept taking more pills thinking it would knock me out and I took in excess of 45 of them and I don't remember anything. I don't remember being taken out of the house by paramedics or rushed to the hospital or anything to do with it.

"I just woke up many hours later in the hospital and given the fact that that medication was the impetus for me being brought to the hospital, I had to wilfully commit myself to the psychiatric ward. And I did that."

It's a rare occurrence for anybody to be so open and frank about such personal issues, but Good has always voiced what he's wanted - from political ideologies to his real feelings about his ex-wife. And regarding his hospital stays, well most of that came as the building blocks of Hospital Music.

For now we'll leave him with this particular album. But if it's so good the Juno Awards acknowledge it with a trophy, don't expect Good to be there - he's just not that kind of star.