Amy Millan and I have never met; the closest we came was some months back, when she checked in via phone early in the morning from a Vancouver hotel room sounding slightly worse for wear. But it doesn't take long to understand why she's achieved a status bordering on iconic in Toronto's music community.

A drink with the Stars frontwoman and sometime Broken Socialite at a Bloor Street Bar is like a cross between a rendezvous with an old friend and a slightly awkward first date. She arrives late, flustered and possibly a bit tipsy. She's come from a poolside photo shoot, which would explain the excessive makeup and the flower in her hair. It also explains the tardiness, since she emerged from the shoot to find her car towed. And maybe the tipsiness, since she was apparently plied with wine.

Just a couple of years into indie stardom, Millan has assumed a somewhat larger-than-life persona. A born charmer, she's brash and candid -- making no bones about a hard-living existence in which she's foresaken her Toronto and Montreal stomping grounds for life on the road. Her conversations, like her songs, are peppered with references to bourbon and wine; at one point, she nonchalantly mentions doing "shitloads of cocaine" during a brief and unhappy stint in Los Angeles.

When talk turns to politics, I'm treated to an impassioned explanation of why Americans suffering under George W. Bush deserve our sympathy. But it's our own prime minister who really gets her going; her next solo album, she jokes, will be titled Harper's Bizarre.

For now, though, we're focused on her first solo album, which gets its proper launch this weekend with a live performance at Toronto's North by Northeast Festival. And what Honey from the Tombs tells us, from its moody tone to the eight years she spent making it, is that there's another, more vulnerable side of Amy Millan we're just getting to know.

Before she'd first hooked up with her bandmates in the Montreal-based Stars, Millan was already plugging away on her solo album. It was then that she began working with Toronto rock fixture Ian Blurton -- a partnership she credits with ensuring the project never died.

"I worked with a couple of other people, but it was always supposed to be Ian," she says. "He was the captain behind this record, and he wouldn't let me veer off course and let it be buried."

That, it seems, was a major risk - not for lack of interest, but for lack of confidence. In fact, Millan goes so far as to say she was in "terror" of releasing it.

Part of the problem, as time wore on, was that the songs she was recording in brief breaks from her other bands had mostly been written when she was much younger. "What I had were these songs that I'd written as sketches when I was a kid, and I didn't work on them -- I just sort of wrote them in my bedroom and then went on tour with other bands."

Set to finally release it two years ago, Millan realized she wasn't happy with what she considered an awkward mix of straight-up country and more up-tempo pop. "I took it out on the road and listened to it, and I didn't like it at all," she recalls. "So I went back and recorded six more songs. So I had about 17, 18 songs to choose from ... They stand from when I was 18 to when I was 28, and I really needed the whole body of work to choose exactly what I wanted."

Even now, she doesn't seem entirely comfortable with the tuneful country-folk mix. Playing it to her Stars bandmates, she says, was "terrible ... I made sure everyone was very, very drunk, and I put it on when they could hardly remember what happened the next day."

While the atmospheric album hardly merits her self-doubts, it's a considerably more sombre affair than one would expect. But while lamenting that she can't sing as well about "being in love" as "falling out of love," she gives herself a rare bit of credit for the tone.

"How I picture my record is that, if people don't want to drink alone, they can put it on and we can have a drink together," she says. "And they can be maudlin alone and not feel so lonely."

Not that loneliness appears to be a big problem. An hour into our chat, Millan leans back and declares that we're "having a party over here." Then she notices the time, realizes she was supposed to be at her last interview 20 minutes ago, and bolts - but not before offering a hug and the flower from her hair.

The date has ended abruptly. But for all her purported insecurity, Millan has proven every bit the charmer that her preceding reputation promised.