Sarah McLachlan – Mirrorball
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Williams on July 11th, 2003
Mirrorball, like the audio CD of the same name, is grafted from Sara McLachlan’s 1998 performances and tour. The music is drawn in almost equal parts from her multiplatinum “Surfacing”, as well as her best studio album to date, “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy”.
McLachlan is widely considered as one of the latest in a long line of women’s musical pioneers. While she has only been recently “discovered” by the mainstream because of her creation of and involvement with the Lilith Fair, she has been able to m…intain an almost fanatical following that dates back to the early 1990’s. With her reputation as a dynamic live performer and coupled with the fact that her last studio effort “Surfacing” sold more copies than she could count, it’s no surprise that she released “Mirrorball”; essentially a live version of many of her greatest hits. Thanks to Arista / BMG, we also have a wonderful vehicle in which to enjoy Sarah “live” in our living rooms with 1999’s release of Mirrorball on DVD. A very straightforward and beautiful presentation of Sarah McLachlan live.
McLachlan’s warmly expressive voice is still at the epicenter of her performances. She roams through these songs with the greatest of ease, riding the rails between singing for dramatic arena effect – huskily growling, airily trilling – and knowing what to play down with her sensually controlled crooning. Overall, McLachlan’s vocals match the heavily percussive intensity of her band and the build of her backing vocalists, producing a more spacious sound than the precise pitch rendered on her studio recordings.
If you’re expecting a KISS concert with lots of bells and whistles, you’ve come to the wrong place. McLachlan simply steps up to the mike, barefoot and in a blue evening gown with matching eye shadow and a feather boa, and delivers almost two hours of her best material – the way you’ve always heard it. She offers up very little in the way of light-hearted insight or onstage antics – she simply lets her voice and the music stand on its own. With her haunting voice and strong, poetic lyrics, McLachlan attracts the audience she wants and doesn’t have to do anything else to captivate them. Sarah’s fans will undoubtedly be happy to soak up Sarah’s vocals on the no less than twenty-five popular songs that dominate Mirrorball. However, those looking for a totally captivating, pyrotechnics-laden, laser light show having, intensive audience interaction, live experience may find the concert film falling just a bit short. We simply get a lot of tight, close-up, glam shots of Sarah (which is fine by me) without much else. There is not much footage of the band and even less footage of the audience – but who cares? Most will not purchase this DVD to see shots of the audience or the band – we want to see Sarah do what she does best and that’s exactly what we get.
Here is the track listing for Arista / BMG’s Mirrorball. Songs that are NOT included on the CD version will be annotated with a ‘+’ next to the song name.
1) Intro (Last Dance) / Building a Mystery
2) Plenty (+)
3) Hold On
4) Good Enough
5) Do What You Have to Do
6) Witness (+)
7) Wait
I Will Remember You
9) Ice (+)
10) I Love You
11) I Will Not Forget You (+)
12) The Path of Thorns (Terms)
13) Mary (+)
14) Adia (+)
15) Fear [alternate angles]
16) Elsewhere (+)
17) Vox (+)
18) Into the Fire (+) [alternate angles]
19) Possession
20) Ice Cream
21) Sweet Surrender [alternate angles]
22) Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
23) Angel
24) Credits (Last Dance)
Audio
BMG does an excellent job in the audio transfer department for this DVD. While Sarah McLachlan’s Mirrorball defaults to a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix, hitting your –AUDIO- button on your DVD remote revels a nice surprise – Dolby Digital 5.1. Sweet!
While the Dolby Digital 2.0 does an excellent job of instrument separation and giving a warm sound to the concert, swapping over to the Dolby Digital 5.1 track really opens up the soundstage. While not a perfect 5.1 mix by any means, especially when compared to recent blockbusters, this particular mix does give a much richer, more ambient sound that its 2.0 option. As expected, the 5.1 is far superior than the Dolby Digital 2.0 track and sounds better than listening to the actual CD itself (as it should). There is very strong LFE usage throughout to compliment the musical nuance’s from Sarah’s haunting, mellow voice and the beautiful, vibrant acoustic guitar melodies – all are captured beautifully in this 5.1 mix from BMG. In a nutshell, the mix sounds great! The extra punch that the Dolby Digital 5.1 track provides really makes the DVD a wonderful aural experience.
All in all, the front surrounds and front soundstage sounds excellent while the rear surrounds offer little other than making the track more engrossing and rich. Also, crowd noise suffers somewhat in this transfer. It sounds very “manufactured” and cheap and never gives the viewer the feeling of being in the middle of a concert crowd like other concert films I have seen; namely, The Eagles: Hell Freezes Over from Image Entertainment. Now THERE’s a concert film put puts you front and center! However, I am here to speak of the merits of BMG’s transfer on Mirrorball and they’ll definitely get a thumbs up from me in the audio department. Very enjoyable track with a very rich, ambient feel.
Video
The video quality of Mirrorball is what you should expect from most concert productions. It is next to impossible to re-produce a live concert and make it look like a high-end feature – very few have done it and gotten away with it like U2 and The Rolling Stones have. However, with those being the loftiest of goals, what we are left with is a great Sarah McLachlan concert experience. BMG gives us Mirrorball in a 1.33:1 full-frame transfer.
BMG has done an admirable job here with the video. This has got to be one of the best concerts on DVD that I myself have seen visually. While the print might suffer when going head-to-head with something like New Line’s Se7en or Disney’s Toy Story 2, Mirrorball is still stands as the finest concert footage on DVD I have seen to date. Overall, the picture is very sharp and came from an almost perfect master. All the colors are properly saturated and there are only a couple of occasions where flakes and flecks are evident – and then only for a quick second – a “blink and you’ll miss it” anomaly.
There are very few problems with the film, and if I had to nitpick one, it would be noticeable grain in certain scenes. As is the case with so many concert films, all the multi-colored spotlights splashed on a completely dark arena combined with the continuous smoke effect can really wreak havoc on DVD picture quality. You have to remember that this is not a multi-million dollar blockbuster film with dozens of people solely dedicated to the DVDs video transfer and tweaking efforts – it’s a much smaller budgeted concert video and not as much time and effort are going to be spent in perfecting this transfer for the DVD medium. While it’s much harder to notice this effect when done in quick bits and pieces (like action movies), that’s all you see in a concert film, and, at times, it just makes the picture look grainy to me. Not DISTRACTINGLY grainy, but when taken as a whole, probably a bit “grainier” than a normal film would look. While Mirrorball is not quality of suffering from this problem often, it is noticeable in a few places, even if for a short amount of time.
Negativity aside, BMG does provide us with an excellent transfer. The picture is not as soft as other concert films I have seen and looks very clear and sharp when put up against some of its competition. Colors were very bright and vibrant and flesh tones were as accurate as they could be with red, green, blue, and yellow lights bouncing off of it. Black levels held up very well and there were only slight amounts of pixelation and artifacting noticed during some of the most contrasted scenes. The often tight, close-up shots of Sarah held up nicely and maintained their clarity while overall the picture maintained a sharpness not often seen in concert footage. Very impressive transfer from BMG of which I am very grateful. However, when stacked up against some of the recent heavy-hitters in video transfer, it just doesn’t rate high marks comparatively
BMG provides us with as great overall experience. Colors, lighting, saturation, and detail are overall very good and add much to the Mirrorball viewing experience.
Special Features
BMG has added some very nice extras in order to compliment the viewing experience of Mirrorball. In addition to the nine “bonus” tracks that are not on the CD version of “Mirrorball”, we also get some other very nice features starting with a nice menu system. Even though the menus feature static pictures of Sarah from the concert footage, they are artfully and tastefully applied to some gorgeous backgrounds that offer easy navigation.
First up is Interview – a 20-minute or so interview that Sarah gives one-on-one to Terry David Mulligan. This is a very informative and interesting interview that I enjoyed watching immensely. Sarah covers everything from her early days, to touring and inspiration. We get a lot of info in a short amount of time and it is very fun to watch.
BMG also provides us with the elusive, and in my opinion, highly overrated, Multiangle option. There are multiple angles for 3 of Sarah’s songs on the Mirrorball DVD – “Fear”, “Into the Fire”, and “Sweet Surrender” all come with at least 3 different angles in which to view them. While I am not a big fan of this feature, I’m gonna add an extra .5 point just because this DVD is one of the few mainstream releases (I don’t consider porn mainstream – But, hey, that’s just me!) that actually uses multiple angles. From this submenu under “Special Features”, you can actually see what different angles are available and select it right then and there. However, to do this on the fly, while that particular song is playing, just hit the –ANGLE- button on your DVD remote and it will change right then.
Rounding out the rest of the extras are Sarah’s Biography and graphical Discography with individual track listings. Also included are menu accessible Lyrics for each song included on the disc and a 31-image Photo Gallery of Sarah from concerts and promotional shoots. Just for kicks, we get a screen with information on Sarah McLachlan’s fan club “Murmurs” and what you can do to become a member.
Parting Thoughts
If you are a Sarah McLachlan fan and don’t already own this DVD, turn your card in at the door. This DVD is a great experience for anyone who bothers to pick it up. The good video transfer, as well as the rich sound put you right in the middle of a wonderful concert experience.
The only thing missing from this DVD is lyrical subtitles during the concert. While it is nice to have all of the lyrics to these songs packages as an extra, it would have been that much nicer to se them while the concert was actually playing. However, everything else is as it should be. BMG gives us great concert footage, a decent Dolby Digital 5.1 transfer, and almost 2-hours of nothing but Sarah McLachlan. A must-have for McLachlan fans and probably for anyone remotely interested in Sarah McLachlan as an artist. If you aren’t a fan after watching Mirrorball, you never will be.
Special Features List
- Bonus Tracks
- Interview
- Multi-Angle
- Biography
- Discography
- Lyrics
- Photo Gallery
