Any songwriter worth their salt can write a sad song that can reduce you to tears. Sarah McLachlan can reduce you to tears with almost any song, even the peppy ones, not because they are tragic, but because they inspire and provoke the mind. With her Shine On tour, she deals these songs out like the house gambler at a Vegas table, and like Vegas, what happens in your mind at a McLachlan show stays in your mind.
For me, it was World On Fire that stood out the most at her concert Saturday night at CN Centre, recasting a song that for me was little more than a sleeper hit.
Those who have followed McLachlan over her 20-plus year career know she is legendary for remixing, revisioning and rebooting her album material. She did so with World On Fire on Saturday, adding strong layers of background vocals that gave it new life.
I've been an appreciative fan of Sarah's music and personality for about as long as she's existed in public life. But I have often resisted some of her material the first few times I've heard it. Others feel the same way, or it wouldn't have taken until 1999 for I Will Remember You (first released in 1995) to win a Grammy Award. I think World On Fire is going to be a slowburn standard like that.
One could easily think ubiquitous songs like I Will Remember You and the global melancholy megahit Angel make Sarah into the official soundtrack of sadness. So wrong. It's true that her lyrics are always laden in mental cargo, even the ditties, but her tempo range and instrumental aggression have many sides. Songs like Sweet Surrender and the chunky new Love Beside Me have a lusty grunge growl propelling her siren voice. She comes across soft and sensuous when it suits her, but she can wreck the place, too and few do it better.
The best number of the night, in fact, was a crushing power-version of an quiet old favourite. Fear was a showstopper, flashing rock credentials all over the stage.
The many sides of McLachlan don't come as a surprise. She is exactly who she advertises herself to be, courageously misbehaving in public with the slick honesty of a kid in adult's clothing. So unafraid of people is she that two sets of strangers got invited up in stage for a couch seat for each segment of the two-part concert (she had no opening act). They hugged, told jokes, took selfies, and asked her questions like we were 2,000 guests at the family picnic. Based on questions from the audience we got to hear that the song Back Door Man was about secret abortions in the shockingly recent years women couldn't direct control over their own bodies. We got to witness her sit at the drum kit and tap out a comical solo. We got to hear her yodel an old camp song from her teenage years. When told by one couch sitter "your concert moved me so much I had a tear on my cheek" and then asked if anyone had ever done that for her, she responded with a heartfelt admission about how much she is influenced by Peter Gabriel.
The result of those conversations was a full understanding that we in Prince George got our own show. No other community received those little moments. Each paying audience gets its own money's worth.
