MARTHA Wainwright's new album, Goodnight City, came out in November...and then again on January 20.

"I think people need to be prepared," jokes Martha. "And it needed two releases because it's so good!" So, yes, there was a "soft release", as the industry calls it, in November "but it was right up against the holidays, so we did some shows around the States but I wanted to start in earnest in the new year and so it does kind of feels like a new release".

Saying hello to Goodnight City for a second time coincides with 14 British and Irish dates, among them Leeds City Varieties Music Hall tonight, as the 40-year-old Canadian-American singer-songwriter promotes her follow-up to 2012's Come Home To Mama.

"I have a history of doing my solo records this way; I tend to have three to four-year gaps when I do other things in between, like The Wainwright Sisters' Songs In The Dark album of duets; the Edith Piaf record I did, or Trauma, a set of songs for a French language show on TV in Canada and France with an accompanying album.

"But it also takes me a while to write songs for a solo album: I don't play the guitar every day, I don't write a song every day, and I have other things in my life to fulfil me now, like having two children."

Martha wrote half the songs on the album, while the other half were written by friends and relatives: Beth Orton, Glen Hansard, brother Rufus Wainwright, Michael Ondaatje and Merrill Garbus of tune-yArDs.

"As a writer, one of my Achilles heels – and I have two heels so I guess I can have two Achilles heels – is that I haven't always dedicated myself to my work and I've tended to write about things that have happened to me in life, rather than creating things in my songs," she says.

"For me, it forces me to sing about what I know, rather than getting into the potentially good habit of making up stories, though I have started to fictionalise things more now with songs about other people, rather than me, and also I've co-written songs with other people on this record."

York Press:

"I like that phrase a lot: 'Goodnight City'," says Martha Wainwright

Nevertheless, Martha's tendency is "still to write my life" in her songs. "When the subject matter is painful or sad, usually it's a great relief to write a song and then have the finished result, which can turn sadness into joy. That seems to be a good way to turn things round, though you can also create a self-prophesy by getting too uptight on yourself."

Away from her musical projects, Martha – the daughter of American folk singer and actor Loudon Wainwright III and the late Canadian folk singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle – has been writing her memoirs for publication by an American publishing house in "about a year's time". Has she chosen the title? "No! The publishers chose one, so it's called I Might Regret Telling You," she says, not regretting telling you that.

She is happy with her own choice of title for Goodnight City, however. "I like that phrase a lot: 'Goodnight City'. My son was saying it a lot when he was maybe one and a half, and so many of the songs reference my children, but the phrase also indicates the end of something or maybe the beginning of something," she says.

Beginning what, Martha? "I have a feeling that the second half of my life might be better than the first," she speculates. "There have been a lot of amazing things in my life, but also a struggle with a lack of confidence to get somewhere. Now I'm not so concerned about what people might think or what I look like, so I feel I'm in a better place."

Martha Wainwright and special guests play Leeds City Varieties Music Hall tonight at 7.30pm. Box office: 0113 243 0808 or at cityvarieties.co.uk