On her second visit to the Salt Lake Valley in a year, Sarah McLachlan started right where she left off.
Her new show began with the same song, "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy," and the same dramatic lighting effects that ended her last concert here. McLachlan's trick worked, and Saturday night's performance at the Huntsman Center felt like a continuation of her previous visit rather than a mere repetition of it.Since McLachlan's last performance here before a Deer Valley crowd in August, everything in her dark, romantic world has grown bigger: bigger album sales (her grammy-nominated Fumbling Towards Ecstasy album is platinum), bigger venues (the show was moved from the compact Saltair Pavillion to the Huntsman Center), a bigger light show, even a bigger piano at the artist's fingertips.
Fortunately, the 26-year-old Nova Scotia native hasn't let her success breed distance. Instead, she's seized the opportunity to grow closer to her music's organic roots. The result was a concert even more satisfying that her previous, stellar visit.
Saturday night, McLachlan downplayed the techno-grunge elements of her music, opting instead for lighter, acoustic arrangements. She also focused more attention on her quieter previous record, Solace, performing six songs from that 1991 release.
After presenting electric versions of "Drawn to the Rhythm" and "Wait," the band's six members gathered around McLachlan's piano for an acoustic set that included "Lost," "Ice" and "Elsewhere."
The unexpected gem in this unplugged session was "Backdoor Man" from Solace. On record, the song is a driving, angry admonition. Live, with a restructured chorus and a lilting acoustic arrangement that featured breezy accordion passages, the song became a lovely, fragile plea.
In most other cases, live arrangements remained similar to - but cleaner and more dramatic than - their studio counterparts. McLachlan continued her habit of expanding the dynamic range of her recorded works: quiet interludes grew even quieter; loud passages were even more intense.
Consistent from album to stage is McLachlan's voice - full, fluid and rich. Much like R&B crooner Anita Baker, McLachlan wraps her voice around a song's melody, completely enveloping every note. Her stunning dynamic range was best showcased on "Fear," which started as a quiet, tender piano ballad and segued into a dramatic, high-intensity number with piercing vocals.
This hybrid rendition of "Fear" underscored McLachlan's fascination with looking at songs from several different angles.
Her new album, The Freedom Sessions, re-examines seven tracks from 1993's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, presenting scaled-down versions of songs at various phases in their incarnation. McLachlan didn't mention the album or play any of its arrangements Saturday, but computer work stations in the concourse played the 20-minute CDROM presentation included on The Freedom Sessions.
Throughout the set, McLachlan's light observations provided a welcome respite from the dark, heavy hues of her music. After the set's second song, she thanked the crowd for coming, wished them good night and exited the stage. She returned, smirking, to exclaim "April Fools!" Later, she introduced the apocolyptic "Plenty" by encouraging her listeners to dispense with facades.
Ending a night of "sad and depressing" songs on a rare happy note, McLachlan sent her twenty-something audience home singing lines from Fumbling's sing-along favorite: "Your love is better than ice cream, better than anything else that I've tried . . ."
New England singer-songwriter Paula Cole opened the show with a set of solid songs - from her debut album, Harbinger - and a presentation style that enters into the terrain of performance art.
She prowled the stage, donned a ceramic mask, supplemented percussion by beating her microphone on a five-gallon bucket and whistled a complex musical passage during her 40-minute set.