"It's sort of like 'bring your report card home to the parents day'," a likable-sounding Martha Wainwright says pondering her two-night stand in Quebec this week.

"You want to impress your home audience," she says via telephone from New York City. "You want them to feel that this thing that they've spawned has gone out into the world, and is doing well and not letting them down."

Like a lot of singer-songwriters, Martha was penning songs long before she was front and centre. But laying the groundwork - accumulating lots of life experience, leaving her home in Montreal to live in the Big Apple, touring with her big brother, Rufus - preceded actually recording a full slate of songs to release on her own.

And after years spent lurking in the shadows of music stardom, 2005 ended up being a hectic year for the 29-year-old singer-songwriter.

Following an appearance in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" last winter, Martha's full-length debut was released to enthusiastic reviews in April. Non-stop touring followed soon after.

"It was a big year work wise," she announces. "I've been on the road almost the whole time. But over the past 12 months, I discovered that I was able to succeed making music on my own.

"I took eight years to make the album because I had a definite idea of what I wanted my first record to sound like. Listening to it now, I think I was honest musically with myself and stayed true to that."

Music execs certainly agreed, and when Martha was asked to record additional tracks for the album's European release, her Canadian label eagerly scooped up the bonus tunes releasing them as a five-song EP, "I Will Internalize." And giving her fans north of the border a chance to hear the songs is something she's completely happy about.

"I really wanted to record 'Dis, Quand Reviendras-Tu?' (Originally written by legendary French singer Barbara) for my Quebec audience," she says. 'While 'Bring Back My Heart' is a song I thought would be nice for Rufus and I to sing together. Rather than a duet, it's almost like two sides of the same person.

"It's so rare that you hear Rufus' and my voice together without anything around it."

Rounding out the set is the sparsely arranged title track (a song she says represents her the most because of its "raw delivery"), the emotively strum-heavy "Baby," which featured heavily in her live set while on the road last year, and "New York, New York, New York," a quirky track that finds Martha lustily playing in an imaginary room with Angelo Badalamenti, Julie Cruise and Madeleine Peyroux.

Although Martha's seemingly endless tour schedule has followed her into the New Year, the songstress is readying work for her sophomore disc, which she hopes to record this summer. She's even found time to cut a track with Gary Lightbody for Snow Patrol's forthcoming "Eyes Open."

"Even though there's still touring to be done," she says, "I'm starting to write and think about my next record."

As for predictions on what the album will sound like, Martha is coy.

"I never know how anything is going to end up, but it will be very much recognizable to my fans."

So in other words, following her same recipe for success?

"A lot of the people who wanted to work with me (in the years leading up to her solo debut) tried to change some of my material and I was hard headed enough to not let that happen," she laughs. "So the one thing I can say about my next record is... it's going to sound like me."

That's music to our ears.

Martha Wainwright performs at Montreal's Spectrum tonight and the Granada Theater in Sherbrooke tomorrow evening.