Her voice is clean, pure and as smooth as glacial runoff rolling over a worn stone. Her face radiates light and her songs distill delicate truths about love and compassion.

But in the darkness of Vancouver's Railway Club, singer-songwriter Tara Maclean recently spoke about the day she changed her life by nearly taking it.

"I found myself sitting on the bathroom floor with a bottle of Tylenol halfway down my throat," she says, staring at the wood grain of the table in front of her.

"A three-year relationship had just ended. I cheated on him and he refused to speak to me. I looked out the window and I was totally lost. I was out of control. I didn't know what to do," she says, ending the sentence with a smile.

"I'd taken all the pills in tears, and then as I was sitting there on the floor of the bathroom, I had this sudden urge to live. I remember thinking, I'd gone through too much to give up. I called my stepmother and said, 'I think I've done something really stupid.' "

Watching Maclean tell the story, it's hard to believe this vital, angel-faced 23-year-old would ever want to leave the world behind. Quick to smile, easy to speak, Maclean emanates confidence and a sense of tranquility.

In her songs, however, you can hear both sides. Pain and self-possession, joy and alienation are ever-present on Maclean's debut LP, Silence.

No doubt it was this gentle grasp of human suffering and Maclean's angelic voice that caught the ears of two Nettwerk Records executives in April 1994.

Maclean was sitting on the deck of a Victoria-bound ferry, singing a song she'd written called "Let Her Feel the Rain."

On the upper deck, Tonni Maruyama and Cathy Barrett (both of whom were with Vancouver-based Nettwerk Records at the time) heard the silky strains, and a year later, Maclean was signed to Nettwerk and inked a publishing deal with Sony Music.

Almost three years later, Maclean is a performance veteran. She's shared stages with Ashley MacIsaac and Tom Cochrane. She and Cochrane will team up once more for a World Vision benefit in Vancouver at the end of the month.

Maclean has also landed a recurring role in a new American TV show in the style of the '80s after-school ritual, Fame. She says life will always surprise you if you give it a chance.

"You know, I've never really talked about [the suicide attempt] before. But I guess it's time to tell the story. I can do it now. I feel strong. And I'm really happy.

"But I remember that place. I remember the bathroom floor. I know I never want to be there again," she says.

Born in Prince Edward Island to a mother with a drinking problem and a father who left shortly after she arrived, Maclean says she was "a troubled kid" who was a steady shoplifter and had little respect for herself or anyone else.

As she entered her teens, things just got worse.

"My mum's house in P.E.I. burned down. She wasn't there at the time, but all the kids were sleeping. We were rescued by an off-duty police officer who came in three times to get us all out of the house. My baby sister was only two," says Maclean. "I don't remember much about it, I was unconscious from smoke inhalation."

As her mother unravelled and headed to Europe, Maclean was left to spend time with her step-father in Dartmouth, N.S. But things didn't work out.

"I didn't get along with his 24-year-old wife," she says, laughing. "He kicked me out."

Barely into her teens, Maclean headed off to England to rejoin her mother.

"She's totally straight and sober now, but she was pretty much just drinking at the time," says Maclean of her mother's first months in Europe.

"I decided to leave in the middle of the night while she was sleeping. By then I was 14. I put on heels and makeup and took a plane back to Canada."

Maclean ended up in Victoria and started living with her biological father.

"I didn't even know about him until I was 10. I thought my step-father was my dad. Turns out my real dad was a highland dancer and a great singer. It didn't mean anything to me - I was pretty numb to everything at the time."

From numbness came the suicide attempt and from the suicide attempt came humiliation. But from humiliation, finally, came understanding.

"People can get lost in the moment. But there's always going to be something beyond the pain. Things do get better, but it's easy to forget that when you're sinking," she says.

Humbled but defiant, Maclean set to writing songs.

"The songs somehow gave me a sense of purpose. Creation is our end. It doesn't matter what it is - just that you do it," she says.

Tara Maclean performs at the Railway at the end of May. Silence is in record stores now.