Sarah McLachlan @ The Hollywood Bowl May 31st, 2024

Musically speaking the 1980’s were a hard act to follow and a lot of the music of the early 1990’s was… a little weird, if not outright crap. 

It’s almost as if a bunch of music producers got collectively stoned at some Billboard afterparty and said, “Hey dudes…, like,… what if we took electronic rock, and mixed it with soft jazz with pop hooks, and then added like a witchcraft hippy vibe for edginess.  What would that sound like?” 

And it didn’t stop there.  Soon producers and musicians started mixing all kind of genres until at last the youth of America collectively said, “Fuck that” and we ended up with Grunge. 

Which is not to say that there wasn’t some good music during the early 90’s. There were some standouts that sounded great in the moment, and a few of those even have stood the test of time and are still listenable and enjoyable today.  

One such artist who had a massive impact both in terms of sound and culture in the 90’s was Sarah McLachlan.  

Sarah McLachlan’s music was a big part of the 90’s with her first album Touch being released in 1988 followed by another four major studio albums, including her breakthrough Fumbling Towards Ecstacy in 1993, the multi-platinum Surfacing in 1997, and also being the driving force and founder of The Lilith Fair which toured from 1997-1999. 

Although her music wasn’t really similar to a lot of the other stuff I was listening to then, I was definitely a fan and it featured heavily in the soundtrack of my life for two major relationships and the birth of my daughter.

So when I saw an Instagram post that Sarah McLachlan was touring in support of the 30th Anniversary of her 1993 Fumbling Towards Ecstasy album, and on May 31st, was going to play the Hollywood Bowl with fellow Canadian artist Leslie Feist opening in support… 

It seemed a great opportunity for a date night.  And yet… I hesitated a little in buying the tickets.  

I am also a fan of Feist who I’d seen at the Bowl some 10 or 15 years before, but it’s been a minute since either artist has featured heavily in my playlist.  Even with your favorites sometimes, you need to take a break, and when you do, it can sometimes be hard to reconnect or rediscover the emotion and feeling that made that music what it was for you. 

One way to do this is with a live show.  Alternatively it can also be something that ends up closing the door on an artist for you altogether. I’ve been to more than a few concerts in the last few years featuring artists from the 80’s and 90’s and… well let’s be real, even rock stars age.  Some of them harder and faster than others. 

Nothing is quite as sobering, or as much of a reality check as seeing one of your favorite artists from your youth trying to put on the same show they did 20 or 30 years ago and looking and sounding old.     

I bought the tickets anyway and am happy to report that this was not that show.  In fact it turned out to be one of the better shows I’ve seen in a long time.  

In spite of LA being one of the bigger metropolitan areas in the world.  Sometimes shows at the Bowl can seem more like a neighborhood concert in the park than a major show. The opener usually comes on just as the sun starts going down behind the hills.  The audience is still settling in, enjoying their wine and their food, and saying hello to all of the friends they haven’t seen for a while but run into because they have the same taste in music.  That was the vibe as Feist opened up around 7:30. While she had a couple of big albums about 10-15 years ago, she had kind of disappeared for a while. Most of the people around us didn’t know her by name, she and her band were just the “Opening Act”, and for the first couple of songs she played some newer things most people have never heard.   

Then she played “My Moon, My Man”  and people realized “Oh Hey I know this,” and they began to get into it.  From that point, Feist and her band slowly captured more and more of the audience with every song, before wrapping up solidly with 1234 and Let it Die.  I would have loved to see her do Sea Lion Woman, again, which if you’ve ever seen Feist do would instantly make you a fan, but it was a solid set and by the end of it, the people who came not knowing her name were asking it.