Sarah McLachlan: Afterglow : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Sarah McLachlan has a gorgeous voice -- malleable and exotic. She is a skillful composer, sensitive enough to write an album inspired in part by the death of her mother and the birth of her baby girl. But at its worst, McLachlan's music can be overly obsessed with the pursuit of beauty, soporific and self-absorbed - no matter how intelligently crafted it may be. McLachlan's first studio album since 1997's multiplatinum Surfacing, Afterglow finds her surrounded by a coterie of fine musicians concocting cinematic moments of orchestral fervor on "Stupid" as well as an unstoppable groove of swirling optimism on the crackling "Train Wreck." Die-hard fans will be delighted. Others might yawn. If McLachlan ever chooses to let herself go, she might come up with something much more transcendental than pretty background music.