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Sarah McGlaughlin
Mirror Ball
Arista

Mirror Ball is a bone thrown to Sarah's fans who need something to cling to between this last Lillith Fair and her next album, tentatively due sometime around the year 2005. This disc is permeated with the stink of "contractual obligation." Don't get me wrong, I like Sarah's music, and beautiful songs like "Building A Mystery" sound as nice on this disc as they do on the studio releases. Which is the problem with this record. It has a wonderful live feel, but with close listening it sounds like a studio recording with a bit of extra reverb and crowd noise mixed in. Every song melts into another until it becomes one long, mild, mega-mix. Track nine, "Fear," has some interesting sounds floating in the ether, and "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy" has a bit of an edge. But on the whole, the public would have been better served with a generic "best of" package instead of a generic live album.
-TS

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