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Having spent much of the last two years celebrating the old — with the Fumbling Towards Ecstasy 30th Anniversary Tour — Sarah McLachlan is now onto something new.
“This is a brand new show, with brand new songs off the new album called ‘Better Broken,’” McLachlan told the capacity crowd at the Masonic in San Francisco on Friday. “I’m going to pepper the set with new stuff, but there will be lots of old, familiar stuff as well.”
New path, but one thing definitely remains the same as ever: her voice is better than ice cream. And, yes, that includes cookie dough ice cream.
During the course of nearly two hours, and running through 20 songs from more than 30 years of her stellar career, McLachlan’s voice was nothing short of exquisite, divine, miraculous, wondrous — take your pick of highly complementary adjectives, since they all pretty much work in this situation.
The 57-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter — who became a household name in the ’90s while leading the blockbuster Lilith Fair tours and selling millions upon millions of records — took the stage at 8:20 p.m., some 10-15 minutes before her band would join her, and opened the show with a brilliant solo-piano version of the new album’s title track.
It was one of seven tunes performed from the recently released “Better Broken,” McLachlan’s long-overdue 10th studio album that marks her first collection of new original music since 2014’s “Shine On.” Of course, 11 years is a long time to make fans wait for new material, but this batch of music may just be worth it — ranking among the finest albums of 2025.
She’d remain alone on the stage for the first three songs (and change) — thrilling the crowd with “Fumbling” favorite “Possession” then introducing the new song “Only Human” — before the five-piece band joined a few moments into “I Will Remember You.”
As per usual, McLachlan was quite personable and charming on stage, opening up to the crowd about a number of challenges and key moments of her life. She’d use these stories, as many of the best performers do, to add depth and reveal meaning to the music.
For instance, she provided background — background that she kept to herself for quite some time — on her first-ever top five pop hit, “Adia,” from the mega-popular album “Surfacing” from 1997. McLachlan explained how the song was inspired by the pain she caused to one of her friends.
“I basically crossed a line you were never supposed to cross,” she told the crowd. “I fell in love with my best friend’s ex.”
(Audible groans from the audience)
“Yeah,” McLachlan continued. “It was, obviously, completely unplanned. This door swung open and there was no closing it. I was young and dumb. I did not not handle it very well at all. And my friend was really, really hurt — no surprise.”
The man in the middle of the drama, McLachlan explained, is long gone, but the singer and the woman patched things up and are “still best friends.” The revelation provoked the most humorous crowd response of the night, as one female fan loudly yelled out the mission statement: “Sisters before misters!”
With a good belly laugh to move her forward, McLachlan continued to mix old and new, going from yet another “Surfacing” ’90s pop classic — “Building a Mystery” — into the “Better Broken” track “Reminds Me.” McLachlan described the latter as her attempt at writing a country song, having been inspired by hours spent binging “Yellowstone” during the pandemic.
The setlist was almost entirely built from the new album and her two huge hit platters of the ’90s — “Fumbling Toward Ecstasy” and “Surfacing” — as well a pair of tracks from the multiplatinum 2003 affair “Afterglow.” That’s understandable, since it allowed McLachlan ample opportunity to support “Better Broken” while still giving fans all the big radio hits.
Yet, it’s still a shame that McLachlan didn’t touch on her earlier material — especially 1991’s “Solace,” which may just be the finest album in her catalog — and that she ignored her very worthy, yet far-less commercially successful later records like 2010’s “Laws of Illusion.”
Also, McLachlan has built herself a pretty impressive resume as a Christmas crooner, having released two very well received seasonal efforts — the platinum-plus-selling “Wintersong” of 2006 and the 2016 follow-up “Wonderland.” So, it would have been really nice to hear her toss in a few holiday favorites into the mix — perhaps her great versions of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” or “Silent Night” — given the timing.
But it was hard to quibble about the setlist as McLachlan and her superb band just kept right on performing one winner after another, including some really memorable takes on the “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” cuts “Elsewhere” (featuring a stellar guitar solo from Luke Doucet) and the fun crowd sing-along on “Ice Cream.”
McLachlan closed the main set with two more “Fumbling” tracks — a volcanic vocal take on “Fear” that prompted an exuberant standing ovation from the crowd and then, to close, the title track.
But McLachlan quickly returned with a two-song encore that mimicked the back-and-forth nature of the overall set — starting out with the final new song of the night, “Gravity,” before closing the night in superb fashion with longtime fan-favorite “Angel.”
Sarah McLachlan setlist:
1. “Better Broken”
2. “Possession”
3. “Only Human”
4. “I Will Remember You”
5. “Adia”
6. “Building a Mystery”
7. “Reminds Me”
8. “Wait”
9. “World on Fire”
10. “One in a Long Line”
11. “Sweet Surrender”
12. “The Last to Go”
13. “Answer”
14. “Elsewhere”
15. “Ice Cream”
16. “If This Is the End…”
17. “Fear”
18. “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy”
Encore:
19. “Gravity”
20. “Angel”
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Jim Harrington
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