February 12, 2009
Publication title: Straight.com, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Unknown
Writer: Sue Frause
Sarah McLachlan Searches For A Spark
The notoriously slow-working Sarah McLachlan has a new album in mind, but it might take a while
These are not easy times for Sarah McLachlan. But she’s got one thing working in her favour: the Georgia Straight is not the Star.
If we were, we’d be blaring headlines like “Sarah Caught in Steroid Shock”, and we wouldn’t necessarily be lying. McLachlan’s not doping up for reasons unknown, however. The real story is that she was prescribed powerful medication to fight off the attack of laryngitis that nearly cancelled her recent appearance as part of Ships and Dip V, the annual showbiz cruise headlined by the Barenaked Ladies.
We could also take the celebrity-blogger tack and tell the world that, just last Saturday, McLachlan and Bryan Adams were seen holding hands on Ambleside Beach. Being a reputable news outlet, though, we need to explain that the hands in question belonged to McLachlan’s young daughters India and Taja. Adams, passing through en route to a gig in Victoria, was merely making a social call.
As for McLachlan’s separation from India and Taja’s dad, drummer Ashwin Sood, the singer makes it clear that curious fans will just have to continue to parse the two new songs, “Don’t Give Up on Us” and “U Want Me 2”, that graced her recent greatest-hits compilation, Closer. With lines like “Love has taken me for a fool/Gotten out in time to save himself” and “I can’t be the one/You wanted me to be,” they hint at what happened and who their author thinks is to blame. But, as with much of McLachlan’s earlier output, it’s also obvious that she’s trying to make something of universal import from her own story.
“And that’s tricky, too—especially considering what I’ve been through in the last year,” she notes, calling from her West Vancouver home. “I’ve already been pretty revealing in the two songs that I wrote and put out there. I made a conscious decision to do that, but now I’m like, ‘Where do I go from here? How far can I take that, and how far do I want to take it?’
In + out
Sarah McLachlan sounds off on the things enquiring minds want to know.
On cruising the Caribbean with the Barenaked Ladies: “I had a lot of trepidation, for many reasons. And you know what? It was basically a music festival on a boat. Everybody jammed with everybody, and the audiences were wonderful. They were very relaxed, very respectful, and just a bunch of music lovers. Certainly there were a few people who came back from Cozumel at 5 p.m. drunker than skunks, but you knew that was going to happen. As far as the people coming to the shows, the 700-seat theatre that we played in was lovely, and you could hear a pin drop the whole time.”
On kids’ music that doesn’t make her cringe: “I found a really good CD at the library. It’s American folksongs, but for children. Her name’s Elizabeth Mitchell, and the CD’s called You Are My Little Bird, on Smithsonian Folkways. She’s got almost a bluegrass voice, but it’s really pretty, though.”
On whether the title of Closer means “the end of something” rather than “less far away”: “I wouldn’t interpret it as that, because it isn’t the end. Well, it’s an end and a beginning. It’s looking forward and looking back, and this is the last 20 years—what I consider to be the best songs of the last 20 years. But am I done? No way am I done!”
“My whole desire in writing is to work towards understanding, whatever topic I’m dealing with,” she adds. “That’s what the [compilation album’s] title is about: getting closer, getting closer to understanding. I’m still not there, but sure… It’s a process.”
The good news for the listeners who hailed McLachlan’s eight Juno and three Grammy awards, bought 11 million copies of 1997’s Surfacing, and made Lilith Fair a landmark achievement in the history of women in rock is that the singer is definitely thinking of making a new record.
The bad news is that it might take a while.
McLachlan is a famously slow writer, and in the years following her last collection of original material, 2003’s Afterglow, she’s done everything that artists do when they’re seriously blocked. She’s issued a live album, 2004’s Afterglow Live. She’s compiled a selection of other people’s songs, 2006’s Christmas-themed Wintersong. She’s done the greatest-hits routine, an album of outtakes, and one of remixes. And, let’s not forget, she’s also had two kids. As even back-yard birds know, having young to rear doesn’t leave much time for song.
“I used to sequester myself away in the woods for months, and I certainly can’t do that anymore,” McLachlan admits. “And there’s yet another reason why it takes me so long to finish songs and to get albums out, because I’m just so distracted. I have been in that mommy mode for so long now, and I find it quite tricky to take my two hats on and off.
“It’s okay with existing material. Like, I can go out and play a show, no problem. But it’s really hard for me to separate myself from that world long enough to put myself into a place where I need to write.”
Her manager and label boss, Nettwerk Records founder Terry McBride, hasn’t been forced to hire a hypnotist—at least not yet. But he has had discussions with his client about how to spark her creativity.
“Terry has suggested more than once that I get off my butt and try writing with other people,” McLachlan reveals. “But I don’t know….I find it [songwriting] incredibly intimate, and I’m somewhat intimidated, I guess, by the thought of marching into a room with a pretty much complete stranger and going, ‘Hey, let’s bare our souls. Let’s get naked right here.’ It just makes me cringe. But, yeah, I think if I get really stuck I will try that, and it’ll probably be a great thing to do.
“I should start writing with Sheryl Crow,” she continues. “I mean, she writes great melodies, and she’s got a bit more of an edge. I always thought it would be nice for me to have more of an edge. I try, and then I just end up sliding right back into this nice, comfortable spot.”
Other creatively stimulating strategies have been contemplated, but at heart McLachlan knows that she just needs time.
How much time? Well, it depends.
“I’m not very good at that,” she says, when asked about the time line for her next release. “That being said, you could talk to me in four weeks and I might be bursting with excitement at all the things I’ve written. I do know I need to have some discipline and get myself back doing it every day—and I can, now. I didn’t touch my piano for eight weeks ’cause I couldn’t open my mouth to sing, so it just seemed rather pointless.
“But I love it, I love writing,” she adds. “It’s hard work, but it’s so rewarding when I feel like I’ve achieved something good. It’s a very different world from just reiterating stuff I’ve already done. That’s wonderful, too, but it’s really easy—and I’ve needed things to be really easy. But I’m really looking forward to being challenged again.”
