Solace is the first true music I every really heard. Before Solace, I was all about dance music. Solace changed that. Solace changed everything.

This album, Sarah's second, solidly secured her status as a masterful songwriter. She'd already displayed an uncanny sense of melody and mood on Touch. The lyrics on Touch are relatively juvenile and some even border on nonsensical! The lyrics here on Solace are deep and introspective, mostly dark and filled with imagery. Lighter pop-oriented tracks such as "Into the Fire" in which she seems to celebrate life, contrast nicely with the bleak desolation of "Mercy" and "Black", while beautiful yet scornful / sorrowful tracks like "The Path of Thorns" and "I Will Not Forget You" add to the meatiness of this album. "Mercy" in particular, while incredibly depressing, really stands out as it showcases the immense POWER of her best instrument, her voice. The track consists of just a few layers of her voice and a keyboard in the background.

She sings low and deep on this CD, completely unlike the equally powerful soprano vocal acrobatics on Touch. There's no 'look at what I can do with my voice' here (when in fact she's capable of doing far more than most female singers).

The music is downright excellent. She uses classical instruments, guitars, mandolin's, and organ's that combine with her deeper vocals to create a very earthy sounding album. The timing ranges from quick tempo's on "Into the Fire" and "Back Door Man" to slow plodding rhythm's on "Home" and "Drawn to the Rhythm" but the album maintains it's coherence from track to track.

Each track stands on it's own as a great song, and combined they add up to one hell of a "complete" sounding album. There are no filler tracks, and even the pop-ness of "Into the Fire" is still grounded and substantial enough to be considered more than just radio friendly.

At the time Sarah McLachlan said of this album that it was her baby and she needed it to be perfect. I think she and producer Pierre Marchand achieved that goal and then some; and ended up creating one of the most timeless sleeper albums of the 90's.

PS: The US version of this album has a cover of Donovan's "Wear Your Love Like Heaven" which is far too light and fluffy for this release, and ruins the coherency of the album. Allegedly, Sarah was in fact quite angry that Arista tacked on this track for the US as she "intended the album to end with Mercy". Try to get the 10 track Canadian version instead, as that was the album she wanted to create.

She does arguably better on her third release "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy". The highs are higher and the lows are lower. While Solace is my favourite album of all time, I daresay FTE is her best.

Mike S