June 30, 1991

Publication title: Calgary Herald, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Unknown
Writer: James Muretich

Growing Up

Sarah McLachlan still sounds as if she’s running across misty moors, her long skirt scraping the earth, clutching a book to her breast while her tear-stained face is stung by wind-whipped rain ’til all the countryside cries.

But the McLachlan of Solace, her just-released second album, is far different from the 20-year-old who released her debut disc Touch three years ago.

The book she clutches to her breast contains more than just naive love poems, her tears are those of real experiences rather than imagined innocence, and her music – while still gentle and evoking the likes of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush – speaks with a controlled clarity and passion that is far more powerful, far more haunting.

“I didn’t feel like I had anything real to write about (on Touch), so I just wrote about abstract stuff.” says McLachlan, who performs at Sparky’s Diner Tuesday night.

“Tons has happened to me in the last couple of years. I’m beginning to find out there’s an awful lot out there to understand or try to understand. I’m just starting to.” says McLachlan, who admits she’s still “young” in her understanding of the world.

“I can see more clearly people’s greed and their need to possess things without caring what it does to the environment and other people.”

That comes across through forcefully on one of Solace’s best tracks, Black, a song whose strings, bass, drums and harmonica set a stark backdrop for a corporation head who feels “all I take should be free” and asks “if I cry me a river of all my confessions, would I drown in my shallow regret?”
Says McLachlan : “I was writing that song in the third person but my producer (Pierre Marchand) gave me this analogy of a person on stage taking the point of view that these (big business) people are horrible in what they’ve done to the world, oh look at what greed has done… everybody would feel empathetic and say, yeh, yeh, that’s really bad.

“Instead, in this song, I play the corporation pig and get into the role rather than saying this guy’s not nice, look at all the bad things he’s done. I am this guy. This is what I do. And I don’t give a shit.”

McLachlan does care, though. She’s still growing up and occasionally delivers an embarrassing line (like “in the terms of endearment”), but the baring of her heart and mind reveals emotions and ideas far more intriguing than on Touch. Solace places her among today’s best female singer/songwriters.
“Dealing with a major record company like Arista (which distibutes her music in the U.S.) is an eye-opener. Music should never ever have to go near business but, unfortunately, it has to. In order to distribute it, they need a commodity, they need product and, man, I just can’t accept that. I rebel against it as much as I can.”

And the little rebel from Nova Scotia, now living in Vancouver, has succeeded. This is an intensely personal album, the kind that will prove a compelling listen for those who like their music gentle yet gripping.

“I put everything into this album. I’m so proud of it,” says McLachlan.

And so she should be.