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When I was young, part of every Christmas was me getting at least one CD, then once all the gift stuff was over retreating into my room because I didn't want to socialize with relatives (because I was young) and it was time to listen to the CD. All the way through, in order, paying attention to it and deciding how it stacked up. This year, I got an honest to goodness Christmas CD for the first time in -- I don't know -- well over ten years.

And it's fitting because it's Better Broken, and Sarah McLachlan was one of my favorite musicians growing up. I began to lose interest in her somewhere in the mid-2000s, and when 2010's Laws of Illusion came out, which reflected on her divorce from her longtime drummer Ashwin Sood, I felt let down for the first time by her. While her previous albums had given me songs that had just gotten baked into my soul, that one didn't really speak to me. There were some flashes of good stuff, but -- meh? I didn't listen to it much. Shine On, landing in 2014, didn't make much of an impression either, and then there was a long spate of years and the sense that she was maybe just done making albums.

Well, following today's gift-giving, I got myself alone (because things were quiet, because now I do like to socialize) and listened to Better Broken. All the way through, in order, paying attention to it and deciding how it stacks up. While it doesn't hit with the strength of her 90s and early 2000s work, it does feel more individual and personal to her, more so than Shine On.

It's definitely not an upbeat album. You've got the catchy title track, the love duet "Reminds Me" with Katie Gavin, and then the political-rally anthem "Rise" which is only missing a crowd of frustrated but hopeful people clapping to it. It's a very quiet album. And a very angry one. But that's where the highlights are too.

To my surprise, it seems to be about the divorce. Her ex, as best as I can recall, was pretty absent as a subject in Shine On, though I admit I've never really internalized those songs, so maybe I've forgotten it. Better Broken is extremely personal and feels angrier than Laws of Illusion, even though it's so many years later.

I would recommend "One In a Long Line", about how Sarah sees herself in a chain of women who have survived painful marriages. It features both of her (and her ex's) daughters, and I can only speculate how emotional recording this song, presumably about their own family, was. What I particularly like is that the music, while angry and forceful, still has an underlying gentleness to it, probably reflecting Sarah's feelings for her daughters. Not a weakness, but a gentleness.

"Long Road Home" is a quiet, sexy love song that seems absolutely tailor-made to be the backing track for a GMV shipping tribute -- seriously, just pick your ship and figure out what scenes you're going to put over the dramatic part at the end. "Only Human" is a soft, sadder reflection on love, in sound rather like her famous song "Angel". "Wilderness", along with "One In a Long Line", seems to be targeted at her ex and is quiet and cutting, especially with the light faux-whimsical tripping piano. This one, for all that it's dainty, feels markedly less gentle than "One In a Long Line".

And then you get to the last song, absurdly called "This Is the End..." complete with ellipses. Title aside, I like this closer. It's extremely unhappy, yes, and overblown, making you wonder if "Rise" was all a lie, but it has this apocalyptic folk sound I enjoy. It feels like a bookend to 1991's "Drawn to the Rhythm" from her album Solace, just a bunch of people huddled out in nature somewhere as the enormity of the world hits them.

It's definitely worth a listen. It feels a bit more like the Sarah I remember listening to, all those years ago.

#sarah mclachlan #better broken #listening