Sarah McLachlan has been thinking about “the arc of all the years of music I’ve been making” for nearly four decades. On her current tour, she said, it’s “nice to revisit the old stuff.” In her recent appearance at Wolf Trap, she balanced playing her biggest hits and deep cuts with material from her latest album, last year’s Better Broken.
On July 5, McLachlan kicked off her set with the title track from that record, then went “way, way back to the beginning,” playing the first single she ever released, “Vox,” from 1988, adding, “I haven’t played this in about 30 years.” “The Path of Thorns (Terms)” is more recent, from 2006. Sarah noted how “patterns start to emerge” in all the relationship songs she’s written. Another of those relationship songs, “Reminds Me,” from Better Broken, is a meditation on “the love and joy that comes with rediscovering” falling in love.
Sarah followed that with “Fallen,” then “Adia.” “I didn’t use to talk about it,” she said. “I crossed a line,” she said, “and fell in love with my best friend’s ex.” McLachlan and her friend fell out for a while, but eventually reconciled, and were even at the birth of each other’s children; they remain friends to this day, long after the men involved in this story have left the picture.
Next up was “Full of Grace,” then “I Will Remember You,” which she wrote for the soundtrack to the movie The Brothers McMullen. In one of the night’s more intimate moments, Sarah played “Only Human” solo on piano with her band gathered around mics at the front of the stage to sing backing vocals.
Watch the official visualizer for “Only Human” by Sarah McLachlan on YouTube:
She kept things going with the dark, almost gothic “Building A Mystery,” inspired by a trip to New Orleans. “World on Fire,” she said, is “all about gratitude and understanding we all have gifts to offer the world.” McLachlan described “One In A Long Line” as “the closest thing I have to a pissed-off protest song;” it was inspired by the rollback of women’s reproductive in the last several years. Sarah went back to her hits with “Sweet Surrender,” then played “The Last To Go.” It’s “a breakup song about a relationship I stayed in too long,” but it’s also about her mother, and what she sacrificed in giving up her dreams to support her husband’s ambitions and raise their three kids. This was relatable to me: my mother was something of a prodigy who started attending the University of Chicago was 16, eventually earning an MBA. My sister and I had a lot of health issues — I had five surgeries before my fifth birthday — and she made a similar choice.
“Elsewhere,” she said, is “about trying to crawl out from all these expectations and demands.” I found that relatable, too; her father was a marine biologist, and my extended family is full of heavy hitters with exceptional educational and professional resumes. Accomplishments that would’ve been considered extraordinary in any other family get brushed aside when your relatives include Ivy League professors and a Nobel Prize winner.
McLachlan went for a lighter mood with “Ice Cream,” then abruptly changed directions again with “This Is The End,” a sort of apocalyptic tale inspired by a movie starring Gregory Peck. She finished her main set with “Fumbling Toward Ecstasy,” then came out alone for her encore to play “Gravity,” followed by “Angel.” “Angel” is objectively a good song, but it’s difficult for me to listen to it now, after the many years it was used in commercials for the ASPCA; I get very emotional about animals. She ended the night with “Fear.”
Watch the official music video for “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan on YouTube:
Fellow Canadian (now a resident of Nashville) Allison Russell got the evening started with a fantastic, high-energy set. The Montreal native, who’s been in the music for more than two decades, broke through to a wider audience with her solo debut, 2021’s Outside Child, and the follow-up, 2023’s The Returner. She started the set with the title track from that album, playing the intro on clarinet, which you don’t see a lot of in popular music. (I have a fondness for the instrument having played it, albeit poorly, for a few years in junior high band.) A compelling bit of spoken-word poetry led into “Eve Was Black.”
Russell’s third album, In The Hour of Chaos, comes out this Friday. She played several songs from it, including “Chaos Theory” and “Black Lavender.” “You’ve got to imagine my daughter’s middle-school choir singing on this one,” she said before “Cold April.” She also did “Really Real,” which she played live for the first time at last month’s John Prine tribute, and finished up with “Really Real.”
Russell and her band were terrific, and I can’t wait to hear her new album. McLachlan was great, and her new songs hold up just as well as her classics.
You missed Possession!