It wasn’t billed as a special event, but it was. Special and rare.
Fans of Sarah McLachlan who snapped up 2,750 tickets to see her at Toronto’s Massey Hall Saturday night saw essentially the same show 16,000 people did in June of 2024 at Budweiser Stage, except far more intimate and elegant, given the nature of the room: her 1993 landmark third album, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, played in its entirety, in sequence — as a reminder, that includes the lilting “Ice Cream,” the obsessive “Possession” and hurting “Hold On” — as well as just as many hits from her catalogue.
The singer-songwriter, who has sold more than 40 million albums in almost 40 years, is now just one stop away from finally completing her Fumbling Towards Ecstasy 30th Anniversary tour, after being forced to postpone it twice due to acute laryngitis. It was supposed to end a year ago.
A lot has happened since then.
For one, the last time she was on this hallowed stage — a place she’s played many times but not in the last decade — was last November when she was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. A month earlier Canada Post put her face on a postage stamp.
The 57-year-old is already in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, Canada’s Walk of Fame, and a member of the Order of Canada, and winner of three GRAMMY Awards and 12 JUNOs.
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But for all her accomplishments, as high as one can get in the music industry, McLachlan — who has been doing so many interviews lately we feel equipped to make this assessment — has no airs about her, at all. She radiates a warmth not very common among big stars or even us commoners.
Walking out onstage, her five-piece backing band already in place (husband/wife duo Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland of the band Whitehorse are longtime members), she beamed a bright smile and waved, going right into “Sweet Surrender,” to rapturous applause.
“It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. I had two colds in three weeks and lost my voice twice. But I am so thankful to be able to sing for you this evening,” she said after.
The singer had to cancel the second of two Montreal shows and another in Quebec City because her voice had not recovered from laryngitis. She returned to the stage in Moncton on Nov. 3.
“This is the second to last show before I get a bit of a break, then go back to the States and start the Better Broken Tour. That’s the new record. I wanted to ease into it and play a couple of new songs from it. Hopefully that’s OK.”
She didn’t get into the new album right away. We were treated with three classics off the top, song number two being “Building a Mystery,” then “I Will Remember You.”
Then she talked about the new album again. She had only played “Gravity” at her Budweiser show but now that the album is out, she can slip more in and then work in more as she heads out on the U.S. tour on Nov. 16. in Washington, DC.
“It’s taken 11 years to get to new music and I’m sorry it’s taken so long but life kind of got in the way, but this next song is actually the title track and the name of the record,” she said, adding that it’s the oldest song on Better Broken, written 14 years ago. “I love it so much and I hope you do too.”
The truth is, no McLachlan fan cares what she is calling her tours or really what’s on the setlist. She always delivers a beautiful show of stirring songs, at the piano or on guitar, with that voice that can only be described as pure and crystalline, while some songs like “Mary” and “Fear” show off her high vocal range.
Her two-hour show for which she played the grand piano, guitar and sometimes sans instrument, just at the mic, was like a living room concert: cozy, comfortable and candid.
By the end of it, we knew a lot about her, if we didn’t already — she’s pro-choice (“One In A Long Line,” off the new record), pro-therapy (another new one, “Gravity”), pro-charity ($1 from every ticket sold goes to her eponymous music school), and just a pro (she introduced all the members of her band more than once, and made a point to thank her crew). We also know some not-so-nice things from her young and foolish days, when she fell in love with her best friend’s ex, damaging the friendship; all is good now (“Adia”).
She also walk-dances in a fun, joyous manner – one gets the impression she goes down the street to pick up milk like that, if the sun is shining and it’s a beautiful day.
“I’ve said this many times already, but I just want to say one more time, thank you so much for coming out tonight and supporting me, supporting all of us doing the thing that we love more than anything else,” she said. “I love making music. I love singing it, after 38 years.”
We’re sure she’ll be back within the next year, playing more songs from Better Broken, plus much of Fumbling, except in a different order.