Sarah McLachlan, who has ‘trouble keeping her mouth shut’ in these times, is singing at the Met Philly
She is touring behind ‘Better Broken,’ the Canadian songwriter’s first album of new song in 11 years. It arrives along side a Lilith Fair documentary
Sarah McLachlan is back, and Lilith Fair is having a moment.
The Canadian singer-songwriter has just released Better Broken, her first album of new material in 11 years. Her U.S. tour opens in D.C. on Saturday and plays its second date at the Met Philly on Monday.
The album arrives alongside Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery, a new Hulu documentary directed by Ally Pankiw. The doc emphasizes the impact of the touring festival founded by McLachlan in the 1990s that exclusively showcased female artists and bands fronted by women.
Lilith — which McLachlan headlined three years running from 1997 to 1999, joined by acts including Sheryl Crow, Erykah Badu, Liz Phair, Queen Latifah, Fiona Apple, and Tracy Chapman — broke down barriers in a male-dominated music industry.
The festival also flexed box office muscle, packing amphitheaters throughout North America, including three shows at the Camden amphitheater then known as the Blockbuster-Sony Music Center Entertainment Centre. It defied the industry practice of not putting multiple women on the same bill, or playing female artists on the radio back to back.
Building a Mystery gives McLachlan well-deserved props as a visionary whose we-don’t-need-the-dudes business model foresaw an era where Taylor Swift and Beyoncé fill stadiums. Olivia Rodrigo and Brandi Carlile cite her as a hero and role model.
But even an artist of McLachlan’s stature with a loyal fan base faces challenges reentering the pop marketplace after a decade in the “Wilderness,” the title of a standout Better Broken track.
After taking time to raise her daughters India Ann, 23, and Taja Summer, 18, and focus on her Sarah McLachlan School of Music, which offers free instruction to Canadian elementary and high school students, getting back to making music was nerve-racking.
“There were some areas of trepidation,” McLachlan said, speaking via Zoom from her home in West Vancouver, British Columbia, flanked by her dogs Talulah and Poppy. (A chocolate Lab and a pit bull-German shepherd mix, for the canine curious).
“One was: I’m a 57-year-old woman of privilege,” McLachlan said. “What … do I have to say? I just felt I don’t know what my place in any of this is. It took me a while to find my footing.
“And with the last couple of years of cancel culture and everything seemingly going to hell in a handbasket, and anybody having an opinion about anything getting eviscerated — that gave me pause. Because I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut. And I have very strong opinions.”
McLachlan has worked with producer Pierre Marchand going back to her breakthrough albums Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (1993) and Surfacing (1997). For Better Broken, she teamed with Tony Berg and Will Maclellan for the first time.
The album includes “Reminds Me,” a country-leaning duet with Katie Gavin of Muna that’s kissed by Greg Leisz’s pedal steel guitar. “If This Is the End …” is an apocalyptic singalong partly inspired by the 1959 Gregory Peck movie On the Beach.
“Gravity” is about what had been a “combative and fraught” relationship with her eldest daughter, before they made peace with each other.
“Though life will come apart, break and unbreak your heart,” McLachlan sings in her octave-spanning, sui generis voice. “I will be like gravity, always true.”
That idea of heartache being inevitable — and even beneficial — is at the core of the title track, the oldest song on the album. McLachlan wrote it in 2012, in the wake of her divorce from drummer Aswin Sood.
“Better Broken” is the title song, McLachlan says, because “to me, it speaks to resilience. I don’t think any of us get to this place unscathed. I’ve never been hungry in my life. My life has been pretty easy. But that being said, I lost both my parents to cancer, and my brother to cancer. I lost the dream of a perfect marriage and got divorced when I was 40.
“But ultimately, we have to pick ourselves up and put ourselves back together. And that creates strength.”
Building a Mystery takes its title from McLachlan’s ethereal Surfacing hit. It’s one of her best-loved songs, along with that album’s “Angel.”
She wrote it in reaction to the heroin overdose death of Smashing Pumpkins’ drummer Jonathan Melvoin, whose sister Wendy Melvoin plays on Better Broken. McLachlan donated the song to the ASPCA for a 2008 commercial that raised $30 million. She later poked fun at the tear-jerking ad in Super Bowl commercials for Audi and Busch beer.
McLachlan put Lilith Fair to rest after its 1999 run. “I was exhausted and burnt out,” she says. “And I’m a firm believer in ending on a high note and not waiting for things to lose their luster.”
In 2010, the touring festival was revived, but the culture had shifted from Lilith’s singer-songwriter ethos to a more poptastic one. Crowds were sparse, shows were canceled. But now, with artists like Carlile and the women of boygenius filling arena and amphitheaters, its legacy is apparent.
Evidence could be found on Halloween at Johnny Brenda’s in Fishtown, where 21 Philadelphia artists, including Sadie Dupuis, Frances Quinlan, and Black Buttafly, paid tribute to McLachlan’s festival in a Trevor Foundation benefit.
In September, McLachlan planned to perform at a Los Angeles premiere for Building a Mystery but canceled in solidarity with Jimmy Kimmel, whose show was then off the air, in a protest against “the muzzling of free speech.”
“If Lilith taught me anything,” McLachlan said at the premiere, “it taught me that there is a great strength in coming together to lift each other up instead of tearing each other down.”
Disney owns ABC, which airs Kimmel’s show, and is the parent company of ABC Studios, which produced the Lilith doc. When Kimmel returned, McLachlan was his first musical guest, singing a lustrous, solo piano “Better Broken.”
“Speak out if you have a platform,” she told The Inquirer, explaining why she stood with Kimmel. “If you have the ability to create positive change in your world, now is the time.”
Last winter, McLachlan had to cancel a Canadian tour due to a viral infection and acute laryngitis that caused her to lose her voice.
“I had done all the vocals for the album,” she says. “But it was three months that I had no voice. I had to go on vocal rest. I didn’t know if my voice was coming back. This is my purpose, and to think that it might be gone for good …” She shakes her head and shudders.
Now, she’s fully recovered.
“So it’s great to be back. I’m excited to come and play these shows. I love this record so much, and it brings me a lot of joy to be able to sing in full voice.”
An Evening with Sarah McLachlan, Nov. 17, 8 p.m., the Met Philly, 858 N. Broad St. themetphilly.com