I see you. You're there, looking at this Sarah McLachlan review. Maybe you know Sarah's music, maybe not. Maybe you delight in the poignant predictability that has become Sarah's career, and maybe you sneer at the Lilith Fair and love to burn yourself with cigarettes. Maybe the crack of your ass smells like stale sweat, or maybe it smells like roses. Maybe you are in love with Sarah Mac, or maybe she just speaks the words that define love for you in your world.

Sarah's been splashed all over the media for the last year or so, her gentle, carefully coiffed face representing the progesterone- fest known as the Lilith Fair. No more absurd, though somehow taken more seriously than the Ozzfest, Lilith and Sarah have become as entwined as Lollapalooza and Perry Farrell. Unfortunately, a possible result of her neverending exposure and undoubtedly dense schedule, her recorded work is becoming, my friends, simply boring.

Though Sarah was never considered cutting- edge, she has contented herself with divining tremendously poignant moments from relatively simple arrangements. This is all well and good, and she has received well- deserved recognition for her magnum opus, 1995's Fumbling Toward Ecstacy. But what has she done for me lately? Surfacing rehashes the same themes, the same chord progressions and the same sound with utterly predictable results, giving it the feel of a collection of Fumbling b-sides.

Most of Surfacing lacks the aforementioned emotional depth that has been her hallmark, producing an uncomfortable void when you expect her to come through with the gut- wrenching truth to tie up the song. I see absolutely no reason to invest your hard- earned dough on this disc, but you will... Oh yes, I know you will. Oh God, the pain.

-James P. Wisdom