Sarah McLachlan - Mirrorball

Shot on McLachlan's 1998 headlining tour, the concert captures her in a more theatrical and frankly glamorous (if slightly funky) vein than her fabled Lilith Fair shows: in her floor-length blue gown, sparkling blue mascara, and bare feet, she evokes a more demure, Gen-X cousin to Cabaret's Sally Bowles. With 23 featured songs, Mirrorball on video adds 9 tracks not heard on the CD. The audio mixing is generally excellent, especially on the DVD version, which provides some hall ambience but retains a front-array, proscenium placement to instruments. Shot on film, rather than videotape, the concert preserves the stunning, subtle lighting effects of McLachlan's touring production, albeit at slight visual sacrifice in lower-light segments in which the resolution is grainier. --Sam Sutherland