March 08, 2015
Publication title: post-gazette.com, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Pittsburgh
Writer: Scott Mervis
Music preview: Sarah smiles on new album
“Sarah McLachlan has never been the go-to artist for light and bouncy, and, given the circumstances in her life at the time, 2010’s “Laws of Illusion” was a particularly moody and lovelorn piece as she was splitting with her husband of 11 years, drummer Ashwin Sood.
Last year, the Grammy-winning folk-pop diva from Vancouver returned with her eighth album “Shine On,” pulling up her bootstraps and at one point actually chirping along to a ukulele, “I’m seeing the sun in all the darkest grey skies.”
“The last record was sort of roughly based around the demise of my marriage, basically turning 40 and the [stuff] hitting the fan. Basically depressing,” she says in a phone interview. “It’s a bummer record and I spent a couple years working really hard to figure out how I wanted the rest of my life to look, and the evolution of that is all over [‘Shine On’]. I think that’s why it’s so positive and hopeful, because I feel like I got to a really great place.”
Trying to see the sunlight through the gray is nothing new to her, says Ms. McLachlan, who performs at the Benedum on Wednesday.
“I’ve always tried to be somewhat positive, even in a dark, melancholy song. I’ve always tried to infuse some hope into it, because that’s my personality. I’m always looking for the silver lining. I’m so pleased with this record because I think it accurately depicts my mindset through the three years of writing it and coming out feeling really strong and radiant. I feel like I want to suck the marrow out of every day. I don’t feel like I want to sit and be complacent.”
To get there, Ms. McLachlan not only had to work through the end of her marriage but the grief over losing her adoptive father, who is eulogized and celebrated beautifully in “Song for My Father”: “Your light buried the dark/A constant unwavering heart.”
“I could probably write 15 songs about my dad, but that was a simple way to speak to things he gave to me, what he meant to me,” she says. “I love singing it. It’s bittersweet because I’m thinking of him when I’m singing it. I’m not thinking so much about the loss. I’m thinking about what he gave me.”
These days, the singer, who is in a relationship with former NHL player Geoff Courtnall, is caring for her own daughters, 12 and 7. Even with preteen pop fans in the house, she hasn’t wavered far from the tried-and-true ambient piano pop that made her a star in the early ’90s.
“I don’t tend to listen to that much other people’s music because mostly I have it going on in my head all the time,” she says. “I’m sort of limited to the drive to and from school, being abused by Top 40 radio. I’m kind of kidding because there are some really good pop songs out there. …If there’s a strong melody, I can attach to it and it sinks in, but I’ve always made a conscious effort to take it to another place so it doesn’t sound like something you’ve already heard. That familiarity is part of why popular songs are so popular – because you’ve heard them all before.”
Ms. McLachlan was more exposed to other people’s music when she created the Lilith Fair, a women’s music festival that ran from 1997 to 1999. Although you would think Lilith could function today as a counterbalance to festivals like Warped and Mayhem, it was unsuccessful when they tried to revive it in 2010 with Carly Simon, Norah Jones, Kelly Clarkson and others.
“Lilith came about organically, and it was great timing, and there was a real need for it,” she says. “Though I think the need still exists, a lot of the young women who came to Lilith in the ’90s now have jobs and children and a whole world of responsibility, and it’s not so easy to spend a day at a festival for a 100-plus bucks. People don’t have the money to do that anymore or the time. If you want to talk about why Lilith didn’t do as well the second time around, I think that was a big part of it. The need wasn’t as great. I’m sure if we had Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus and a bunch of those younger fans, it probably would have been a huge success. But you get who you get.”
If she were to revive it now, the first young artist she would reach for would be Australian sensation Lorde.
“I really don’t know what’s going on out there musically,” she says, “but I quite like Lorde, and I think she has a good head on her shoulders.”
In terms of her own stardom, she has her daughters to keep it in perspective for her.
“I’m mom to them, which is the way it should be. They know what I do. They know that I have fame and celebrity, but it’s basically pretty weird for them because they want me to be mom, so I think there’s a bit of a struggle in their own minds.
“I’ll never forget the first time my daughter was old enough to stay up and watch me perform. It was at some benefit and there were like 14,000 people there, and she sat at the soundboard, and all these people were screaming my name and saying, ‘I love you, Sarah!’ And just like my mother, she was so baffled by it. She was like, ‘Why were they screaming at you like that?’ Because for her, I’m just mum, who messes up and doesn’t get her hair just right and doesn’t put enough breakfast cereal in her bowl. I think she was put on this Earth to keep me humble, so it’s hard for her to understand why all these other people like me so much.”
