Tara MacLean hasn't lived the life of your average musician. She has lived in the Caribbean, Toronto, Vancouver and the U.K.; she has played to audiences aboard B.C. ferries; her first tour was with Canadian music monolith Tom Cochrane; and she has the support of Nettwerk Records, who have released her first album, Silence.

Yet, MacLean hints that what influenced her "painfully personal" music most was simply growing up in Charlottetown, P.E.I. Coming from a musical and artistic family, MacLean was fascinated by sounds in general. "Everything became music," she says. "Every sound, I loved as a child. A crackling fire..."

Her affinity for sounds led to an aptitude for music, beginning when she was a young teenager. "When I started getting my heart broken," she says, "was when I started staring wistfully out the window and playing my guitar."

Though the young MacLean lived in a small community where "everyone knows everything about everybody," MacLean's family friends helped her lead a less sheltered life than some children.

"I met actors, artists, the most eccentric of the eccentrics..." MacLean explains. "It taught me I can be wild. I can be vulnerable, and I can express myself."

Which she does on the 11 wistful, soulful tracks on Silence. Her early fascination with sounds is also noticeably present, especially in terms of percussion. "I'm really into tribal drumming," MacLean says, "For some reason I like a real groove that sort of lies underneath, more like a heartbeat."

And heart is something friendly B.C. resident seems to have in spades. It's difficult to believe, having spoken with her, that this positive person could have written such sweetly melancholy material. For example, several tracks on Silence explore images of mirrors, photographs, shadows - reflections caught in time and space.

"Caught and captured and caged was how I was feeling at those times." MacLean says of writing the songs. Despite a certain feeling of "not being able to get away," especially being woman.

"[Society says women] must behave a certain way as women, either in their sexuality or how they express themselves and I did feel like that at times," MacLean remembers. "I could tap into my wild nature and go with it, but even though I was allowed that as a child at home, society still limits you."

Music was one way MacLean took herself beyond those limits. Even during darker times, her music rises from optimism - namely hope.

"When I started writing," MacLean says, "it was to dig myself out of really dark places inside myself, and I found that being hopeful kept me knowing that there was something better, something brighter."

With another tour underway and countless more songs to create better and brighter: is something Tara MacLean can expect her future to be.