Yet, even in , one thing appears to remain true as it was 30 years prior, when I was just barely a teen: most teenagers have no real concept of age. I say all this to preface the dull fact that Sarah McLachlan was 26 when she released Fumbling Towards Ecstasy , currently being celebrated with a robust year anniversary tour.
She was born in , a year after Scott Weiland, Kurt Cobain, and Billy Corgan, the artists who were largely responsible for shaping my worldview as a year-old boy while Fumbling climbed the charts — one that required music to give form to the confusion, inarticulate anger, bafflement towards the opposite sex and particularly in the case of Smashing Pumpkins, lurking belief that everyone had a sinister plot to prevent me from my destiny.
As if to drive that point home as strongly as possible, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy slotted at , directly ahead of Rage Against The Machine as well as previously unimpeachable indie rock standards like Bee Thousand and The Lonesome Crowded West , which hung out in the s.
All of which puts Sarah McLachlan in an interesting space as she readies her first new album in 14 years. McLachlan knew her audience, peppering her stage banter with gratitude, nods to Pride Month and asides that acknowledged the drastic gender disparity in the crowd without possibly alienating anyone.
Several songs were prefaced by McLachlan reminiscing about being a socially awkward kid growing up in Canada who was fully reliant on music as a source of self-worth hence the donation of proceeds to the Sarah McLachlan School of Music.
