Album Review: Better Broken by Sarah McLachlan

After an 11-year absence from releasing new material, Sarah McLachlan returns with an album that feels perfectly timed. Better Broken finds the three-time Grammy winner confronting personal upheaval and global uncertainty with the hard-won wisdom of someone who has learned that survival often requires accepting damage rather than denying it. The album's title track establishes its central DNA immediately--that wholeness might be overrated, that our cracks and fractures can become sources of strength rather than shame.

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Since the late 1990s, Sarah McLachlan's music has gradually evolved from alt-pop to adult-pop, and Better Broken, the singer-songwriter's first album of original material in over a decade, leans even further into easy listening. It's also, notably, McLachlan's first album since her 1989 debut, Touch, without longtime collaborator Pierre Marchand. The album's understated title track is reminiscent of turn-of-the-century radio pop like Dido's "Thank You," and the creak of upright bass, quiet patter of drum brushes, and intermittent whoosh of synths on the lushly atmospheric "Long Road Home" evoke Marchand's textured soundscapes.

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