For the most part, musicians are not terribly articulate about their musical likes and dislikes. After all, that's not how they make a living. However, good musicians are almost without exception attracted to musical excellence in some form or another, and the more eclectic their own creative efforts, the wider the net they are likely to cast as listeners.
Sarah McLachlan's typical comments about the music she has selected for this Artist's Choice CD don't get much beyond "simple," "beautiful," and "heartbreaking" -- but within these vague boundaries, she offers up everyone from
Cat Stevens and
R.E.M. to
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,
Willie Nelson, and
Clannad. It's not always a terribly cohesive program; the stylistic leap from
Ali Khan to
Emmylou Harris, for example, may represent an aesthetic challenge for some listeners. But there's not a dud among the group of 15 pieces in the program, and the program is just unusual enough, without being willfully obscure, that almost everyone is going to come away with some new discoveries. Not coincidentally, that's a basic purpose and premise of the entire Artist's Choice series. With the exception of the
Ali Khan selection (the title song from his 1990 Mustt Mustt CD), all of
McLachlan's selections fall into the
folk end of contemporary
pop -- which is consistent with her own performance orientation. However, she's not afraid of big production numbers, and while the majority of her choices (by
Stevens,
Harris,
Nelson,
Kate & Anna McGarrigle,
Ron Sexsmith,
Lucinda Williams,
the Indigo Girls, and
Jane Siberry) are relatively spare instrumentally, other pieces by
R.E.M. ("Everybody Hurts"),
Peter Gabriel ("Solsbury Hill"),
Talk Talk ("Desire"), and
Clannad ("Theme from Harry's Game") pack a real musical wallop, with a full
orchestral sound and additional
choral elements.
McLachlan is not adverse to musical experimentation (witness the inclusion of
Rufus Wainwright's languid, arty "Poses" and
Siberry's typically oblique "The Life Is the Red Wagon") or verbal dexterity (the
Indigo Girls' "Love's Recovery"), but the majority of her selections reveal a fundamental desire to be moved emotionally and a taste for the dramatic. Sometimes the drama is conveyed by a voice (e.g.,
Cat Stevens); sometimes by the combination of a voice and a particularly incisive, poignant lyric (e.g.,
Williams' "Right in Time"); and sometimes by voice, lyric, and music together (the wall-of-sound presentation of
R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" being the best example of the latter technique). All in all, it's a stimulating journey. And as
McLachlan herself commented, without apology, as she took stock of the finished product: "There's a lot of heavy stuff on there." ~ Bill Tilland, All Music Guide
