Our first time covering her, too, though given her amount of recent singles that’s a lot less impressive…
[Video][Website]
[5.10]
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: With Fiona Apple firmly canonized, and Tori Amos getting there, Sarah McLachlan is next in line among her female singer-songwriter peers (a broad category, but she devised it) overdue for reappraisal: huge deals in the ’90s, with huge discographies and fanbases, yet nigh-absent from the ’90s remembrance festivities, McLachlan damned doubly by association with trip-hop and the wrong sort of women in music. (A quick demonstration: Look up anything written about McLachlan this decade. Count the snarks about Lilith Fair and ASPCA puppies; compare to the number of mentions of Nettwerk or her longtime producer Pierre Marchand. Or just look up last year’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy 20th-anniversary pieces [hint: there aren’t any]. Then go punch everyone who claimed Beyonce fans pioneered not talking about the music.) That said, I can’t imagine this single changing any minds. Listeners poised for yuks will not have a difficult time finding them — crying is mentioned by 0:06! — and those who miss the eerie artiness of “Fear” or “Black,” or for that matter the still-arresting starkness of “I Will Remember You” or “Angel,” will instead get “World on Fire” with even more lite perk, as if Verve Music signed her thinking she was Sara Bareilles. The worst part is, I can’t think of a better career move for her either.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Her voice still cracking at moments of passion even when her blouse remains buttoned to her chin, McLachlan rethinks her sound if not her approach. The guitar crunch complements her wordless keening, blocking out the 1997-era drum loop.
[5]
Will Adams: Seeing McLachlan’s powerful (and incredibly successful) artistry be reduced to a meme is one of my least favorite musical trends of the past few years. “In Your Shoes” strives to fight this with its Surfacing-era production, but the saccharine lyrics only confirm the current biases.
[5]
David Sheffieck: It leaves no platitude unturned, sure, but this is still just dramatically purposeful enough (and decently catchy to boot) that it’s hard to dislike. And I’m a sucker for pop songs using strings for non-ballad purposes, which this does better than anything since “Call Me Maybe.”
[7]
Brad Shoup: Still sigh-singing, still radiating empathy. But the Jepsen-inspired arrangement is nice, especially tricked out with that ’90s-style filtering on the drumloop. The song picks up steam, then hits the valves expertly.
[8]
Edward Okulicz: I can’t hear this as anything other than a B-grade “Adia” or C-grade “Building a Mystery.” While the guitars glided so smoothly on that, on this they are chuggy and clunky. Where her voice on that was this weird, gorgeous mix of soothing, condemning and longing, on this she sounds weirdly detached and disinterested. The lightly-probing strings are nice, but they’re no substitute for a lyric that stabs like “a beautiful fucked-up man/you’re setting up your razor wire shrine.” It’s got a perfect ’90s revival sound, right down to those drum presets, but “In Your Shoes” sounds like McLachlan as remembered distantly and uncharitably.
[4]
Jer Fairall: Always a bit too schoolmarm-y in tone for my tastes even as I occasionally found much to admire in her peers (Chantal Kreviazuk, Jann Arden), this is rather uncharacteristically spry, her usual dirgeful poise unsettled by a lively accompaniment that points the Inspirational uplift of the lyric in a direction that is actually uplifting for once. I guess I like this about as much as I possibly could.
[6]
Megan Harrington: My mind wandered while I listened to “In Your Shoes,” mostly to rude thoughts about who would find the song empowering (Amy Jellicoe) and how the vanilla, suburban middle class that used to carry McLachlan through each year of the ’90s in an air balloon has caught fire and charred. Is there any way possible for this song to find its audience without the medium of VH1?
[4]
Madeleine Lee: Growing up, what always fascinated me about Sarah McLachlan’s songs whenever I heard them on the radio (and that was often, in the late ’90s) was the darkness: enigmatic lyrics about angels and thieves and high towers, the otherworldly sound of her voice, the more often than not minor keys. I didn’t always know what they meant (if they meant anything at all, rimshot), but certainly that was part of what made an impression on me. Sometime between Surfacing‘s ubiquity and the clunky Christmas single I heard on the radio last year, McLachlan has lost the ability or, more likely, the desire to be opaque. She’s certainly earned it at this point, and the swift-moving strings keep “In Your Shoes” from getting too bogged down in its own preachiness, but without any reason for it to stay in my head, the message just drifts out my other ear.
[4]