The sound of breakup and breakdown is there to be felt in Matthew Good's Hospital Music.

Among the first words audible on the trauma-ridden album is a woman's voice repeatedly saying, "I hate you."

Another voice can be heard observing that weird is the new normal. Hospital Music runs to more than 60 minutes. It's intense. No surprise. Hospital Music is a critical and sales hit. Maybe that's a surprise.

Welcome to the new world of Vancouver rocker Matthew Good, a solo artist since 2002.

"It started with my separation," Good tells Sun Media's Jenny Feniak.

"It was not the kind of thing where it was a mature occurrence. It was not the kind of thing where it was, 'OK, 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."

Some fans on the tour supporting Hospital Music have been booing when Good mentions his ex -- who is nine years younger than Good -- on stage. Not too mature either, but then Grade 9 breakups bring out the worst in everybody.

The tour reaches Centennial Hall on Tuesday at 8 p.m. Should be interesting.

Hospital Music is Good's first No. 1 chart position as a solo artist. His last album to debut at No. 1 was in 1999 with the Matthew Good Band's Beautiful Midnight.

Hospital Music hit No. 1 at the iTunes Canada store. Good doesn't have a label deal in the U.S. but it was heard there, too. It also reached the Top 20 at the iTunes USA outlet after its first single, Born Losers was downloaded more than 340,000 times while featured as the free download of the week.

"Why this is revolutionary is that no label was involved, nor were the usual difficulties of working with one present while putting the release for iTunes together," Good says on his blog.

"They contacted me directly some months ago and proposed the idea of releasing it on the same day in the U.S. as in Canada, something that has never happened in my entire career."

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 says.