Sarah McLachlan: Surfacing

It's been four years since the release of Sarah McLachlan's most recent studio album, the huge-selling Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. In that time, she's spent years on the road, taken time off to mentally regroup, gotten married, and founded an immensely successful music festival celebrating female artists. But she's followed all these shake-ups with a pretty safe new album: Surfacing, her fourth studio disc, is built around lush, dramatic, echoey songs like the hit "Building A Mystery." The whole thing is long on vocal technique—her voice sounds fantastic and elastic, while the production is fuller than ever—and short on lyrical insights: Lots of lip service is paid to predictable fare like innocence and desire and sweet surrender. "I Love You" is downright treacly, though her voice, as always, sounds gorgeous. Other ballads, like "Angel" and the hooky "Do What You Have To Do," fare far better. Frankly, with McLachlan making revolutionary moves like founding the Lilith Fair, she may not really need to be making revolutionary lyrical moves, especially when her voice is as exquisite as it is throughout Surfacing.