Sarah McLachlan Pumps Up Energy With Live Album
Singer/songwriter says recordings on Mirrorball
capture what was missing from studio albums.
Staff Writer Chris Nelson reports:
Sarah McLachlan sighed ever so slightly before speaking.
She'd just been asked whether her new live album, Mirrorball,
contained any overdubs 霠splashes of sonic touch-up paint
that some people say correct errors for posterity, while purists
argue they mar the integrity of a truly live work.
McLachlan admitted some cosmetic surgery had taken place
on the tapes.
"There were a few places that there was a note that was flat,"
she said Thursday from the garden at her home in Vancouver,
British Columbia. "So I just sang that one note [again] and
stuck it in there. Technology's amazing. But there's very few
fix-ups, which I'm proud to say."
McLachlan's loyal fanbase apparently cares nary a whit
about such details. Since the album 霠which documents a
1998 tour 霠was released June 15, it has sold more than 367,000
copies in the United States. In its second week on the Billboard
200 albums chart, it sits at #6, down just a few notches from its
#3 debut.
At 10:30 a.m. McLachlan said she was still in her pajamas.
She laughed easily, and lamented that recent steady rains had
caused the roses in her garden to wilt.
It was a bit of relaxed downtime before the Lilith Fair 霠the
popular, female-centered tour she founded two years ago 霊kicks off its third and final run in Vancouver on July 8.
The Vancouver show will include sets by McLachlan,
singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow, R&B singer Mya, funk-pop band
Luscious Jackson, folk singer Beth Orton and others. At
various stops on the 40-date tour, McLachlan will be joined by
hard rockers Hole, rapper Queen Latifah, singer/songwriter Liz
Phair and many more performers.
McLachlan said now is the right time to revisit older songs
such as "Ice Cream" (from 1994's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy)
and hits such as "Building a Mystery" (RealAudio excerpt of
live version), from the Grammy-winning Surfacing (1997),
particularly since she doesn't plan to make a new studio album
for another couple years.
The 31-year-old native Canadian said she was especially happy
with the way the concert version of "I Will Remember You"
(RealAudio excerpt of live version) captures an emotional
energy she described as absent from the original take (on the
1995 soundtrack to "The Brothers McMullen").
"My studio albums tend to be quite mellow, even in the rocking
songs," she said. "The quality of the sound is quite gentle.
Live, there's a lot more energy. There's an audience. You have
to play and entertain them. So you tend to be a little more
animated in your performance."
There are more than just artistic motives behind Mirrorball,
McLachlan manager Terry McBride said.
Since she released her first album, Touch, in 1988, McLachlan
has cultivated a dedicated legion of fans with her lilting songs of
relationships and their tidal shifts.
Some of McLachlan's fans, who made Surfacing platinum six
times over in the U.S. and elevated the Lilith Fair to the position
of highest-grossing summer rock festival for two years running,
also are willing to seek expensive bootleg recordings of her
performances 霠for which she receives no royalties and has no
say in the product. Hence, Mirrorball,along with the May
release of Volume 2 and 3 of the live Lilith Fair: A Celebration
of Women in Music, which feature recordings of McLachlan and
other artists from past tours.
"If you don't have anything live out there, it becomes a
marketplace for inferior products," McBride said from his
Vancouver office.
McBride credited the issue of two tracks 霠"Building a
Mystery" and "I Will Remember You" 霠as free, downloadable
songs through online retailer Amazon.com with driving the
site's pre-release sales of Mirrorball to more than 10,000
copies. Amazon.com spokesperson Paul Capelli would not
confirm sales figures, citing company policy.
But at least one traditional retailer found a few customers
confused by the album. "A lot of people didn't realize that it
was a live album," said Lorraine Blatt, a staffer at Vancouver's
HMV Records, which has sold more than 200 copies of the
disc. "But it's doing quite well. It's Sarah McLachlan, after all."
Marketing tactics and counteracting bootlegs are typically the
stuff of a manager's business calculations, but McLachlan
herself knows how to be organized and analytical. The songs
on Mirrorball were culled from more than three dozen 1998
concerts, all of which contained the same 24-song set.
But back in her garden, McLachlan emphasized intuition, trying
to find songs with the appropriate "feel." The album offers no
detail about the place and date of its recordings, which
McLachlan said was intended to foster a sense of a whole
piece rather than a compilation. McLachlan said she insisted
on taping each night of her tour so that she could do her best
to forget she was recording at all.
"I didn't even think that we were recording," she said. "I can't, it
puts such a weird spin on it. ... We just forgot about it and did
our thing."
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