TORONTO - With a polished third disc ready for release and some prestigious recent gigs behind him, Dallas Green appears poised for an international breakthrough.

But the artist known as City and Colour doesn't want his fans to worry. The troubled troubadour isn't in danger of cheering up anytime soon.

"I'm still the same old guy I've always been," Green said during a recent interview in Toronto. "I still write songs about how I have no faith in myself -- it's never going to change.

"And maybe that's better, because no matter how many times I play at (Toronto's) Massey Hall or Royal Albert Hall (in London), or how many records (sell) whatever, I still think I can do better and still want to be better, moreso for myself than anyone else.

"Having those big experiences just makes me like recess back further into the hole that I'm in that makes me want to get better."

Yet that last comment does not mean that Green, with an ever-growing contingent of fans waiting on his music, is shying away from personal material.

In fact, on Green's third solo disc, "Little Hell" -- out Tuesday -- the 30-year-old includes enough critically intimate details of his life to make an oversharing reality TV star blush.

He delves into his wife's nightmares, into the way he relates to his parents, into fleeting moments of relationship-related despair and into the mental-health struggles endured by his sister.

He says writing about his innermost feelings is not new for him, but he continues to strive for universality even in his most personal pieces.

"When I write songs like that ... I guess I think I write them in a relatable enough way that anyone who's been through something with someone they love, you can easily listen to that song and just replace the word 'sister' with brother, mother, father, or uncle, aunt, anything."

On "The Grand Optimist" -- by turns winsome and foreboding -- he sings about the schism between his own pessimistic view of the world and his father's upbeat perspective. The title track is about the "ups and downs" in all relationships, and the pain that can be inflicted by two people who love each other ("Could it be that I am meant to cause you all this grief?" he wonders).

The gut-wrenching "O' Sister," meanwhile, finds Green addressing his sister directly, exploring his guilt over being absent on tour while she fought against the "blackness in (her) heart."

"My sister, a few years ago, was going through some mental health issues," he explains. "It was really bothering me and affecting me, mostly because I wasn't home, I was away on tour."

"I couldn't help but write that song, and it was sort of my way of dealing with it, because I wasn't there to deal with my family."

"And it's better now, and ... people say: 'How does your sister feel about that?' She loves it. She loves the song."

He says the same of his wife, "So You Think You Can Dance Canada" host Leah Miller. "Fragile Bird" is about the "really, really weird nightmares and night terrors" that Green says she endures regularly.

"It can be very funny but a lot of times it can be really horrifying," he said. "When you're sleeping next to someone who all of a sudden wakes up and starts screaming, doesn't know where they are."

"Everybody's like: 'Should you be singing about that?' She loves it. She's into it."

Perhaps it helps that the song is groovy and sensual, an upbeat highlight of a record that found Green occasionally veering from the delicate folk on which he's made his name as a solo artist.

It used to be that Green's uptempo songs would be a natural fit for his regular gig as lead singer for the mega-popular post-hardcore outfit Alexisonfire, while City and Colour was used as an outlet for his quieter reflections.

Yet even aside from "Fragile Bird," the tempo picks up often here: there's the rootsy sway of "Natural Disaster," or the electrified lament "Weightless," or the stormy closer "Hope For Now."

And while no one would confuse any of the material on "Little Hell" for the caffeinated chaos regularly conjured up by Alexisonfire, Green acknowledges that the former distinction between his two projects feels increasingly antiquated.

"That was the easiest comparison to make, right? The general observation is one's loud and one's soft. And that's fine. That's pretty much exactly what it was. But I think, on the other side, people should also realize that I've got a lot going on in my brain when it comes to songwriting, you know?

"So I guess with this record, I came up with a few ideas for songs, and I didn't want to throw them away or dumb them down just because it was the City and Colour project."

Each of Green's previous two independently released solo projects (2005's "Sometimes" and 2008's "Bring Me Your Love") were certified platinum in Canada. Some have already made the not-so-bold prediction that Green could build on those returns with his third effort -- London's Independent newspaper, for instance, mused in its recent four-star review of his live performance that "Little Hell" was "likely to provide his true coming-of-age."

But Green says he doesn't take such praise to heart.

"You get to the point where you start believing the hype and you lose that buffer zone where you can tell if something that you wrote is (bad) or not," he said. "Because if everyone likes it, then you think: 'Oh geez, I can do no wrong.'

"Whereas I constantly think I can do wrong. It's always a fight to try to not do wrong. I mean, it's great. It's everything I've always wanted, for people to listen to the songs that I'm writing, so I'm glad that people are.

"But I know that not everyone will like what I do. And maybe that helps too."