Sarah McLachlan: Surfacing : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Her 1994 breakthrough album was called "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy;" on "Surfacing," Sarah McLachlan sounds like she's content to just float her way there. Which means that if you want a piece of her nirvana, you have to go along at her protracted, glacial pace. McLachlan favors maternal patience over bombshells, whispered intimacy over a quick payoff. Her songs are cast in deep-blue tints and gray-day moods; she soaks her voice in warm echo. But the world and the heart often move at greater speed, and McLachlan is too rigid in her introspection. She sings in the opening number about "Building a Mystery"; it would be something to hear her work up a good head of steam and just bust through to revelation.

But better the luxuriant, implied profundity of "Surfacing" than the sucker punch of Meredith Brooks' "Bitch," a fair treat as riff and melody go but overreliant -- to the point of irritation -- on the easy shock and loaded meaning of the title hook. With "Blurring the Edges," Brooks has really made two records: the notice-me snap of "Bitch" and the limp Alanis Morissette-does-"Odelay" twists of every other song. Neither tack does her potential the brass and bite of her singing, the articulate sass in her writing -- much favor. But she and I agree on one thing: the part of her shopping list in "I Need" that includes "lots of Todd Rundgren."