**1/2 LILITH FAIR: A CELEBRATION OF WOMEN IN MUSIC VOLUME 2 and VOLUME 3

(Tyde/Arista)

One could easily question the marketing logic of Sarah McLachlan's putting out two separate volumes of live material culled from last summer's Lilith Fair less than a month before the release her own live CD, Mirror Ball (Tyde/Arista; in stores June 15). After all, it does seem she's creating competition for her own album. Then again, people used to think that putting more than a couple female acts together on a major tour was a bad idea. So let's just assume McLachlan knows what she's doing. She's already hinted that this summer's Lilith may be the last Lilith, which proves she's either smart enough to quit while she's ahead or devious enough to engineer a little artificial Lilith fever. One way or the other she wins.

The winners on Volume 2 and Volume 3 of the Lilith saga are the lesser-known songstresses, like New Zealand's Bic Runga (Volume 2), Canada's Holly McNarland (Volume 2), and Cleveland's Rebekah (Volume 3). On the tour they were likely relegated to the smaller second stage, but on the CDs they're right in there with the big girls: Volume 3's Suzanne Vega ("Luka"), Indigo Girls ("Get Out the Map"), and Bonnie Raitt ("Spit of Love"); Volume 2's Natalie Merchant (covering the one Elvis tune preachy enough for her purposes, "In the Ghetto"), Sinéad O'Connor ("Fire on Babylon"), and Shawn Colvin ("New Thing Now"). Diversity also scores points this time around -- more, at least, than on the lily-white Volume 1 -- with Angelique Kidjo and Queen Latifah adding some color and groove to Volume 2 and Me'Shell Ndegéocello and N'Dea Davenport doing the same for Volume 3. But McLachlan herself, who duets with Emmylou Harris on Volume 2 and contributes "Black & White" to Volume 3, will always be Lilith's biggest beneficiary.

-- Matt Ashare