November 03, 2003

Publication title: CanWest News, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Vancouver
Writer: Unknown

Sarah McLachlan returns with a new album, Afterglow, to catapult her back into the stratosphere with her heavenly voice

VANCOUVER – Sarah McLachlan needn’t worry about the likes of Avril Lavigne or teen newcomer Joss Stone getting in her way. McLachlan, the 35-year-old earth muffin mom with a voice as lovely as spun gold has a legion of fans at the ready. She could whip them into a girl-centric frenzy with a touring summer festival like Lilith Fair, release a hit album of live hits called Mirror Ball, then disappear off the map for a couple more years and they’d still embrace her when she returned _ this time in lots of make up and raven haired, but no less pensive and serenely empowered by the inner calm of a new age hippie.

McLachlan releases her new album Afterglow today, and a lot has happened since she’s been away. Avril Lavigne, Pink, Gwen Stefani, Destiny’s Child and a lot of other tough-talking chicks took girl power to a new level.

Even Jewel turned slick and glam to keep up with power princesses like Beyonce and J.Lo and all their numerous copycats. Britney reigned and kind of lost it. Now a 16-year-old British singer named Joss Stone, who sounds like a female Stevie Wonder and looks like a babe at the mall, is about to enter the pop music arena.

Besides Dido, the world hasn’t paid much attention to the heavenly voiced girl singers lately. Nobody’s heard much from McLachlan’s sweet singing Lilith Fair colleagues Natalie Merchant and Sinead O’Connor these days. It seems the boys _ including David Gray, Josh Rouse, and Jack Johnson _ have had better luck in the sensitive new age artist department than the girls.

So McLachlan’s re-emergence will be an interesting one to watch. Her fans are loyal to be sure, as demonstrated by their hot anticipation of her new album. On the Sea of Dreams fan site, the author clearly has trouble waiting for the release date: “Just to build up excitement _ an employee at the CD pressing plant where they’ve been making Afterglow just wrote me and says that they are done making the discs.”

But the industry too has missed the winsome voice that was chosen to soothe the world post-9/11. Whether or not she would want to be associated with such tragedy, it’s a fact that the world turns to McLachlan’s songs for comfort. It’s a relationship that earned her three Grammys and sold more than 25 million albums worldwide. Her Lilith Fair summer tours pulled in more than 2 million fans through its gates and raised more than $7 million in charitable donations. In 2000, she was awarded the Order of Canada for her efforts. No wonder McLachlan’s return is being hailed as the calm after the storm.

And McLachlan herself has not bothered to adjust her artistic temperament to the new, grittier climate of urban sound and attitude. In fact, she seems indifferent to any shifts in demographic, counting on her fanbase of mostly young women to see her through this new phase of her career. Judging from reaction to her first single Fallen, she may be impervious to market trends after all. The song debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Digital Tracks chart and has settled at No. 10 on the Adult Top 40 chart this week of the album’s release.

McLachlan’s album took the last two and a half years to make, a process that was previously held up by life transitions that included her mother dying of cancer and the birth of her daughter five months later. The songs were recorded either at McLachlan’s Vancouver home studio or long-time collaborator Pierre Marchand’s home studio in Montreal.

Afterglow is the first studio album from McLachlan since the eight-times platinum album Surfacing, which lasted two years on the Billboard 200 Albums chart after its 1997 release. The album spawned the hits Building a Mystery, Sweet Surrender, Adia and Angel. It was a strong follow to her triple-platinum breakthrough, 1994’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, which contained I Will Remember You.

She may have gone on a mandatory hiatus from the recording studio for six years, but it could have been six months as far as her music is concerned. The release of her seventh album is a continuation of the same understated melodies and honey warm introspection on which she built a career. McLachlan’s greatest strength is her voice, a supple, exceptionally lovely instrument that evokes pain and longing regardless of the subject matter. When she’s in finest form, she’s putting the Voice to pointed use, as she does on songs Answer and Push, which cover topics that probably sound more personal than they really are.

Happily for her fans, there are no surprises on Afterglow _ the moody, piano-driven song cycles are intact. As is the custom with McLachlan, her songs are like the soundtracks to life’s most poignant moments (which made her a favourite soundtrack artist for the sappy TV drama Party of Five). On first listen, the subtle arrangements might cause the track to float by so softly you’d miss the effect entirely if you didn’t listen close enough, but by second and third listen, the magic usually sets in and McLachlan’s charms reign supreme.

Such is the case with Fallen, and also with Drifting, one of her finest, most eloquent and intense deliveries (and her personal favourite as well). Not all songs captivate so well, however. Tracks such as Perfect Girl and Stupid are so lean on melody they vanish from memory almost as soon as they end, and at times, it seems impossible to differentiate between same-sounding songs.

McLachlan has called the album a transitional marker in her life, and it’s by no means a happy one. She explores feelings of regret and loss throughout, and one song, called Dirty Little Secrets, takes aim at our unsavoury gossipy natures, and it’s a refreshing departure from the elegant, melancholy material.

McLachlan is back, and there’s enough here to send her packing her bags for another epic journey on the touring circuit for the next several years. The album, although not perfect (worthy of three and a half stars), is the salve that fans have longed for and reason enough to catapult McLachlan into the stratosphere once again, where one so heavenly voiced belongs. Love her or hate her, she is the voice of a generation that needs a little beauty now and then, despite what MTV might lead us to believe.