With her singer-songwriter pop, Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan steadily conquered the world in the 1990s. The combination of extremely accessible, but always honest folk pop and a heavenly voice made McLachlan a world star. She also supported fellow singers with the Lilith Fair festival, especially for local female singer-songwriters, which made her even more sympathetic. Nevertheless, the follow-up
… to Surfacing (1997) took a long time to come and McLachlan disappeared from the publicity, so that the fans had to make do with guest appearances for Delerium (the hit Silence), a live album and a remix CD. Family circumstances (her mother died of cancer, Sarah herself became a mother) appeared to be the cause, but finally Afterglow was released in 2004 (the CD was released in the US and Canada a few months earlier). And apart from a slight change in image, it is not noticeable that McLachlan has been away from it for several years, because Afterglow sounds little different than Surfacing. And that is positive, because the quality of the songs is consistently high and McLachlan still has a beautiful voice. With Afterglow, McLachlan is back from not really leaving. (IV)more