October 17, 2006
Publication title: Canadian Press, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Toronto
Writer: Cassandra Szklarski
Sarah McLachlan back with Christmas album after hiatus as a stay-at-home mom
TORONTO (CP) – The lilting vocals of Sarah McLachlan are a staple at graduation ceremonies, weddings and funerals – but in her own home, they’ve been blacklisted.
The celebrated singer-songwriter of such anthems to love and loss as “I Will Remember You” and “Angel” says her 4 1/2-year-old daughter, India, won’t stand for her serenades or lullabies.
“She doesn’t want me to sing, she doesn’t like when I sing,” McLachlan said from Vancouver just before heading to New York to perform Monday night with Ladysmith Black Mambazo at Carnegie Hall.
“I think because it doesn’t include her. I think that she knows that that’s my job and it’s kind of like, ‘No no. When you’re around me, you don’t do that.’ ”
McLachlan says her spirited tot has just started to realize that mom is also a performer and sometimes may not be home.
That painful realization has been hard on both mother and child, McLachlan says as she returns to the spotlight with her new album, “Wintersong,” set for release Tuesday.
“It is a life of extremes and it’s hard on me and it’s even harder on my daughter in particular,” says McLachlan, who married her longtime drummer Ashwin Sood in 1997.
“Two weeks ago, things started gearing up and I was gone. I was gone for a week, I came back, and I’m, ‘Hi sweetie, I’m in a rehearsal’ and she was so pissed at me.”
Still, McLachlan, 38, says she loves being a stay-at-home mom, “the hardest, most challenging job in the world.”
The celebrated singer says she retired from the spotlight two summers ago to focus on family life on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
It was a “luxurious” time off spent surfing and playing with India, she says.
In between, the Halifax-born singer stole time in her home studio to put together “Wintersong,” a collection of Christmas classics – her first album since the 2003 release of “Afterglow.”
The holiday outing includes the melancholy title track, which McLachlan specially penned for the album, and 11 covers of modern and old standards, including Joni Mitchell’s “River” and John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (War Is Over).”
Seasonal favourites including “Christmas Time Is Here,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “The First Noel” round out the disc.
“For me, Christmas and the whole season is steeped with such nostalgia and melancholy,” McLachlan says in explaining her song selection.
“It’s a really joyous time for a lot of people, it’s a really tough time for a lot of people and I sort of wanted to bring songs that bring up all those different emotions.”
“The more contemporary ones are definitely a lot sadder, which appeals to me greatly as far as a singer, a musician.”
The piano-based title track is a particularly sad song, touching on the loss of McLachlan’s mother, she says.
“I lost my mom a week before Christmas four years ago to cancer, and so, you know, Christmas is a little more bittersweet because of it, but also, I have a daughter, who is like this ray of light and who brings out the joy of Christmas,” she says.
“The concept of that song is: Yes, you’ve lost somebody but you can sit and feel really sorry for yourself and feel bad about the situation or you can remember them in their happiest moment. And that somehow brings levity to it and makes you feel a little lighter.”
McLachlan says she has no immediate plans to tour, but fans can find her this month in a string of U.S. television appearances that include the “Tonight Show With Jay Leno” on Wednesday and “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” on Friday.
