A Hymn of Consolation and Grace Beneath the Open Sky
When Brandi Carlile invited the legendary Emmylou Harris to join her on stage at the Gorge Amphitheatre, and together they performed a cover of “Angel”—the haunting ballad originally written and recorded by Sarah McLachlan in 1997—what unfolded was far more than a duet. It was a quiet communion of voices, memory, and reverence beneath one of America’s most breathtaking natural backdrops.
The original “Angel” appeared on McLachlan’s album Surfacing (1997), a record that solidified her place among the most introspective singer-songwriters of the late 1990s. The song became one of her signature works, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard Adult Top 40 chart and climbing into the Top 10 in several international markets, including Canada and the UK. Over time, it evolved into a cultural touchstone—widely associated with compassion, loss, and healing, especially after its prominent use in ASPCA television campaigns in the 2000s. But long before that, it had already etched itself into the collective consciousness as a song of fragile redemption.
When Brandi Carlile, herself a torchbearer of emotionally literate songwriting, chose to perform “Angel” with Emmylou Harris, the gesture carried layers of meaning. Carlile has long acknowledged her debt to Harris—both musically and spiritually. Harris, whose crystalline harmonies shaped the landscape of Americana through albums like Pieces of the Sky (1975) and collaborations with Gram Parsons, represents a lineage of country-folk storytelling rooted in empathy and restraint. To see the two standing side by side at the Gorge was to witness a generational bridge made audible.
The Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington State, carved dramatically above the Columbia River, has always lent performances a sense of the eternal. There is something about the way the wind moves across that canyon, about the vast sky pressing against the horizon, that makes intimate songs feel even more exposed. In that setting, “Angel” felt almost prayer-like. Carlile’s voice—earthy, grounded, trembling at the edges—intertwined with Harris’s high, luminous harmonies in a way that suggested not just harmony, but understanding. They did not oversing the song. They did not modernize it. They allowed its stillness to breathe.
The song itself was written by Sarah McLachlan during a period of frustration and creative block, inspired in part by the struggles and overdose death of Smashing Pumpkins keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin. Rather than sensationalize tragedy, McLachlan crafted something hushed and inward-looking. Lines like “In the arms of the angel, fly away from here” do not offer dramatic rescue. Instead, they offer gentleness—an invitation to rest from the weight of the world. That quiet mercy is precisely what Carlile and Harris honored in their interpretation.
What made this particular performance so moving was not technical perfection—though both artists are masters of phrasing and pitch—but the lived-in quality of their delivery. There was no urgency to impress. Only a shared understanding of what the song means to those who have carried its melody through long nights, hospital rooms, empty houses, and quiet drives home. When Harris enters with harmony, her voice almost translucent, it feels like a benediction. Carlile, eyes often closed, sings as though the words have passed through her own private reckoning.
In many ways, the duet echoed the spirit of earlier collaborations in Harris’s career—such as her work with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt on Trio (1987), an album that topped the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. That record, too, was built on the alchemy of female voices lifting one another rather than competing. The Carlile-Harris rendition of “Angel” stands in that same tradition: a reminder that harmony can be both musical and human.
There is a particular poignancy in hearing artists of different generations share a song about refuge. It transforms the performance into something beyond nostalgia. It becomes continuity. The kind of continuity that assures us that songs we once leaned on still have the strength to hold us.
Under the vast twilight of the Gorge, as the final notes of “Angel” dissolved into the canyon air, there was a silence that felt sacred. Not the silence of absence, but the silence of recognition. The recognition that some songs, when placed in the right voices at the right moment, become more than compositions. They become companions.