McLachlan returns to the road after five-year break

Sarah McLachlan kept things open-ended when she declared a hiatus from the music industry after the final Lilith Fair tour in 1999.

The Canadian singer and songwriter did have an agenda – resting and starting a family with her husband, drummer Ashwin Sood. But it proved to be a more eventful break than she planned, with the death of her mother from cancer and, in spring 2002, the birth of daughter India and the subsequent adjustment to motherhood.

And all the while she was laboring over the songs that became 2003’s “Afterglow,” her first new studio album since 1997’s eight-times-platinum “Surfacing.”

So there wasn’t much rest involved during those several years, but the 36-year-old McLachlan says she doesn’t regret a minute of it.

“I don’t know if I set out to take this much time off … but, yeah, (the break) gave me everything I wanted,” notes McLachlan, who is keeping India on the road with her on her first tour in five years, which began last May. “It gave me back peace of mind and peace in general, and a lot of feelings of being somewhat normal. I think time to just do normal things was really important. I’ve had the luxury of all this time being a mother, for instance.”

McLachlan will perform 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Spokane Arena’s Star Theatre. Tickets are $40-$60, through TicketsWest, (800) 325-SEAT or www.ticketswest.com.

And, McLachlan acknowledges, there were moments when she thought about not coming back at all.

“Oh God, yeah – many times,” she says. “Especially after (India) was born, when I was in the midst of being a mother, I didn’t even bother worrying about it. I was completely overwhelmed and my kid was really colicky, so I was pretty much a basket case. It never crossed my mind I was a musician, that I was anything else other than a mother.”

If her musical career had indeed ended at that point, McLachlan would have been able to look back in triumph. Since emerging from Halifax in 1988 with her debut album, “Touch,” McLachlan has notched sales of more than 28 million albums worldwide and won three Grammy Awards, along with the 1998 Elizabeth Cady Stanton Visionary Award for advancing the careers of women in music.

With airy, empathetic anthems such as “Possession,” “I Will Remember You,” “Angel” and “Building a Mystery” – one part new wave, one part New Age – McLachlan also built a substantial and devoted following that hung on her words and her music for gurulike wisdom and insights. Even the ambient rock of British bands like Radiohead and Coldplay owes at least a nod to her work, though McLachlan is loath to accept that kind of credit.

“That would be a question you’d have to pose for them; I just make the music I make,” she says.