June 21, 1999
Publication title: Time Magazine, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Unknown
Writer: David E. Thigpen
Fine Reflections
Sarah McLachlan’s old songs find new life in Mirrorball.
Coming on the eve of the final Lilith Fair, the all-female concert tour that Sarah McLachlan brought to life two summers ago, her Mirrorball (Arista) marks one of the most exciting and fruitful periods for female singer-songwriters since Laura Nyro and Carole Kind lit up concert halls in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Much of the excitement has hovered around Lilith itself, which boosted once underrated talents like Lucinda Williams and Shawn Colvin. But the sould of the new femal pop machine is surely McLachlan, whose tunes have gained the kind of prom-night, dorm-room and beach-blanket popularity that shows people have woven her music to heir lives.
The 14 cuts on Mirrorball are drawn from McLachlan’s earlier albums, and were recorded live on her spring solo tour. Some of the songs – like the love racked Path of Thorns, from her 1991 CD, Solace – acquire a spacious, cathedral-like grandeur when performed live with her solo piano. McLachlan’s canvas has always been the lovelorn and the obsessed, and her paletter, the primary colors of human passions. Mirrorball chronicles her gathering skill at capturing emotional thruths. “Emotions are fabulous,” McLachlan explains, relaxing in a Manhattan hotel room last week. “I love them because they feed you. You learn so much about yourself, wether you’re in a deep sadness or extrem elation. I enjoy those kinds of extremes because I feel as if I’m most alive at those points.”
The heart of Mirrorball is drawn from her breakthrough 1994 album, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. McLachlan’s studio voice has a serene balance, like a sailboat on still water; live, she unleashes turbulent gusts of feeling. Her new versions of Hold On, about losing a friend to AIDS, and Possession, about a controlling lover, reveal glimmers of rage that her studio albums only hint at. From her biggest album, 1997’s Surfacing, the ode to love gone bad, Do What You Have To Do (which popped up in the Starr report when a certain intern’s jottings to the President cited it as her fave), becomes a taut wire of despair as its restless, searching piano line plays off the icy clarity of her lyrics: “What ravages of spirit conjured/ this tempestuous rage/ created you a monster/ broken by the rules of love.”
After this summer’s Lilith tour, McLachlan plans to take a break for a year or two to recharge her batteries at home near Vancouver and embark on a trek across India with her husband, drummer Ashwin Sood. “It makes sense to call this the last Lilith,” she says. “It’s incredibly rewarding to be part of something that is gaining women recognition, but it’s also a huge amount of work.” And too, she wants to devote time to another kind of creativity. “Some of us in our 30s want to have children, and we all realized that it’s Lilith or kids. Can’t do both.” Sounds like fine material for a post-Lilith album.
