Afterglow Live

EDITORIAL REVIEWS 2004 live release captures the Afterglow concert tour, including over 20 songs from all of Sarah's hits. For the first time ever, Sarah lets her fans take a glimpse at her personal life with 20 minutes of behind the scenes footage. Includes bonus DVD. .COM Apart from a director whose relationship with his subject seems skittish--there's a shyness about the DVD, as though the camera was afraid to linger on its subject too long--and the CD's lamentable incompatibility with iPods, "Afterglow Live" leaves little to nitpick over. Nearly two dozen songs, zigzagging across Afterglow, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, and Surfacing, solidify McLachlan's reputation as a peerless performer on the DVD the careful attention she layers over these already full-bodied, melodic songs gives each additional shape, as if she were singing them for the first time, and her easy magnetism in front of a mic draws her wholly rapt audience in close enough to feel her guitar strings vibrate. The same likable star quality carries over to the CD, a 15-song sampler culled from the DVD's 2004 Toronto concert. Though fans of less weighty McLachlan material may miss the comparative wispiness of confections like "Ice Cream," her full-throated pourings-on for "Building a Mystery," "Angel," and "Train Wreck," among others, will keep Afterglow Live's bulb burning brightly for years to come. -Tammy La Gorce