Sarah McLachlan – Fumbling Towards Ecstasy Legacy Edition

Taking advantage of the Circuit City closeouts, I bought Sarah McLachlan‘s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy Legacy Edition for $8. This is not a bad deal, considering that amazon lists it for $24.98 (for the best deal, you might want to check with her current record label, Nettwerks).

Since I previously already owned the record when it was originally released in 1993, I only picked this up because I liked it and it was a bargain.

The breakthrough hit song on the album is called “Possession”, a passionate love song that so popular that an obsessed fan, Uwe Vandrei, sued McLachlan for using his love letters as the basis of the song. Vandrei was obviously mental, as he committed suicide shortly afterward.

The new material on the Legacy Edition is The Freedom Sessions EP and a bonus DVD (originally released in 2005 as Fumbling Towards Ecstasy: Live). To be honest, since I am already familiar with the original album, I have only watched the DVD.

The DVD is a pretty standard concert, admittedly sometime with poor visuals since the source is probably from 1994 tapes. Between the live show are excerpt of interviews with McLachlan and her dancer/band/performers – which made watching the show more interesting and also give a glimpse into the mind of McLachlan.

I also enjoyed the four bonus music video, which contains two different version of the video for “Possession”! I have only seen the US version, on MTV’s 120 Minutes, but watching the biblical version of the video – I can see why they decided to re-shoot the video.

According to McLachlan,

“Oh it’s so lofty, it’s pompous now. I was trying to dispel that by showing a bunch of female archetypes using historical paintings, ‘Venus’, ‘Adam and Eve’, ‘Salome’s Last Dance’. I wanted to show all women possessing all these different archetypes. I also had myself suspended in the air and wrapped in gauze, as if my personality and my sexuality were bound. Throughout the video I was being unraveled by unseen forces, and I came out in end strong and free and – Ta Da! – there I was my own self. Yes, it was pretty lofty…”

As lofty and pompous as the original Canadian video was, it is more interested than just the uninspiring “deteriorating live band” music US video in a Cathedral.