EDMONTON - So this spectacled folksinger who looks like he's had a cold for a couple of months gets onstage and starts singing Load Me Up mournfully - wait a sec ... that dude is Matthew Good.

Damn, girl! I seriously hope the guy's all right. There are mixed signs.

Mentioning one's recently exed-wife, for example, to the point of strangers in a crowd booing her ghost. What is this - Hank Williams Jr.?

But, of course, we've all been through something like this. You know, where you just can't shake that person you want desperately out of your head, well, gone.

Mr. Good seems to be at the tail end, thankfully, even joking about nudity - missing flashed breasts in the Matthew Good Band days, specifically - but his prognosis isn't entirely cloudless.

Another sign: war obsession. I wrestle with this one.

There's no question that terrible things are going on with record compliance, oblivion and a stupidity we should and certainly will eventually be ashamed of, and I'm proud of Good for his knowledge and politics.

But he's making the mistake of taking it too personally.

That doesn't mean he shouldn't write songs like the killer Black Helicopter, which lets us know "only killers call killing progress." One of the night's highlights.

But I can see it in your eyes, Good - you're into a deep nihilism which ignores the love. That said, keep fighting.

But to prove it: "I love you, Matt," calls a girl in the small soft-seater, to which he responds, "That makes one of us."

Now here's the thing.

Hanging in the lobby beside the opening act, signing autographs like the hot country stars don't seem to know they are, Good's T-shirt tell us sarcastically that he's selling out for the money.

Given that he rides at least one level of "meta" here, is it possible he's actually just playing up his misery for effect? Hmm. I don't think so.

To be honest, I've never found him as interesting as right now, after last night's show.

His jock side is tired, and even though he's talented enough under that Tracy Chapman vocal warble to be seriously gallows hilarious, that pain is vivid and brings us in. Like it has all along, as younger people in another era of pop music.

But let's quit being psychologist - it's just Good's demeanour was shockingly dark last night at a sold-out Myer Horowitz, like Steven Wright was scripting him on deadline.

"Do a backflip? That's what we need to incorporate into the show - a little Cirque de Soleil." He pauses.

"That would end it pretty quick. Walking is about as far as I go."

A little later, he says, "I quit smoking for seven years," waits for the applause. "Don't f---ing clap. I started again." More applause comes. "All RIGHT! F---ing DEATH!"

Then he veers off like an improv artist.

"When I started smoking, cigarettes were a buck sixty. Pretty good deal to kill yourself," comparing them to the price of a handgun.

See what I mean? Dark. But the music, in such an intimate space with the sound so right, was intense.

With a simple, curled-up steel claw of spotlight scaffolding behind him, Good moved in and out of the beams with unconscious skill, opening up with a fusion of I Am Not Safer Than a Bank, Champions of Nothing, with the sneering jab about "when Hollywood runs out of Indians."

He gummed the hits tragically, spilled his busted heart into the new songs.

And every musician goes through a sad album right? Beck, Fred Eaglesmith, Tori Amos - oh, wait, that chick's always screwed up.

Thankfully, one of the things about being bi-polar is that eventually things are going to get better. Er, for a bit.

But even Good knows it, as he teased ... himself, I guess, "Should've made a joke album."