Listening to Sarah McLachlan perform live is a lot like listening to her records. Like 1999's multi-platinum-selling Mirrorball, Afterglow Live relies on the breathy Canadian's fluid and faultless vocals and performances – by McLachlan and band alike – that are so spot-on that they may well have been cut in the studio…
During the mid-'90s, Sarah McLachlan was a near-ubiquitous presence in pop music, establishing adult alternative pop radio with 1994's Fumbling Toward Ecstasy and 1997's Surfacing and spearheading the popular Lilith Fair touring festival, but once the last Lilith wound up in 1999, she retreated from the spotlight, had a baby, and seemingly retired from music. Four years later, she made a typically subdued return with Afterglow, her first album in six years. Not much has changed in the time she was away. Afterglow is firmly within the McLachlan signature sound – a softly tuneful, mildly atmospheric blend of classic singer/songwriterism and a touch of vaguely dreamy alternative pop, all shined and immaculately produced by Pierre Marchand.
Bloom begins with Junkie XL's terrific remix of the Afterglow track "World on Fire." He trashes the hopeful chording of the original nearly completely, instead floating Sarah McLachlan's vocals over a taut guitar line for an addictive mixture of tension and atmosphere…
It’s been seven years since Sarah McLachlan released Afterglow, her last album of original material. That’s a lifetime in the pop world, perhaps, but McLachlan handles her absence well, filling Laws of Illusion with the same sort of adult contemporary fare that made her a star in the first place. The market has changed since McLachlan’s late-‘90s heyday; pop starlets like Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift are now among the industry’s most highly prized female songwriters, making McLachlan seem a bit staid and outdated by comparison. With the 2010 revival of Lilith Fair, though, she has somewhat reconstructed the world as it existed a decade ago, and Laws of Illusion furthers the fantasy by taking its cues from Clinton-era folk-pop.
Live Acoustic (Nettwerk) is an EP by Sarah McLachlan. It was released on 31 May 2004 in Canada only. Four of the tracks were recorded live at a "Live from the Lounge" event with Ryan Seacrest for radio station Star 98.7 on 7 October 2003…