Charts: CAN #1, AUS #37, NLD #52, NZ #13, UK #47, US #2. AUS, UK & NZ: Gold; US: 8x Platinum; CAN: Diamond.
In the leadup to Surfacing, Sarah McLachlan’s personal life was in tatters. She had built a reputation as an ethereal folk songstress with a gorgeous voice and powerful performances at the piano with her wave making Fumbling Towards Ecstacy. Her romance with keyboardist Dave Kershaw had met a bitter end and a gruelling two and a half years spent touring left her jaded and exhausted.
Under the advice of her manager she ran away to Vancouver to decompress, bought a new home, a new piano, and adopted a black lab. The sabbatical gave her creativity another breath, reinstated her control as a songwriter and she thrived again with a collection of new songs that seemed to just flow from her pen. She returned to Montreal where her favourite producer Pierre Marchand awaited their next project. Surfacing benefits greatly from this jolt in creativity and naturalness, but the inspiration would continue.
She also found love again, this time with her drummer of seven years, Ashwin Sood. Together they ran away to Jamaica during the album’s sessions to tie the knot in a tropical ceremony. Little did either of them know the wide reach Surfacing would give McLachlan.
Listening to the record today, its place in the market becomes obvious as a collection of near soft favourites for the right hand of the radio dial, but Surfacing’s best material, conveniently its best known songs, not only stands among the finest music of its time written and performed at a piano, but provides a unique perspective of the instability and uncertainty of love. Throughout the album she diffuses the conformity that plagued her adolescence and faces the things about herself she considered ugly. I have complete confidence that you will be holding back tears singing these songs for the rest of your life.
(Full version: smackmedia.ca/deep-cuts/review-sarah-mclachlan-surfacing)