When Sarah Harmer burst onto the international music scene with her acclaimed album You Were Here (2000), Time Magazine hailed her as “The year’s best debut”. Now, in her latest CD, the Rounder Records vocal artist showcases a bit of her folk and country sides in “oh little fire,” her first new album in five years. These just may be the strongest batch of songs Sarah Harmer has ever released. Co-produced by Sarah and Gavin Brown (Metric, Sarah’s All of Our Names), oh little fire is full of the same hooky melodies, insightful lyrics, and lovely, plaintive singing which attracted so many fans to her music from the start of her career.
You can hear Sarah Harmer perform these songs and more when she takes to the Arakelian stage at the Firehouse Center for the Arts, Market Square, Newburyport, to promote this newly-released CD on Friday, July 9 at 8pm. This event is presented by the Firehouse and WXRV 92.5 The River. Tickets are on sale now ($22 Members • $24 Non Members) and may be purchased in person, by calling the Box Office at 978/462-7336 or online at www.firehouse.org.
Born and raised in Burlington, Ontario, Harmer gained her first exposure to the musician's lifestyle as a teenager, when her older sister Mary started taking her to concerts by the then-unknown Tragically Hip.
From the age of 17 on, Harmer would be a member of various musical groups including Weeping Tile, a group she formed in 1995 with several other Kingston, Ontario musicians. In 1998, Harmer recorded a set of pop standards as a Christmas gift for her father but upon hearing it her family and friends convinced her to release it as an album; which she did in 1999 as Songs for Clem (independent). The follow up, You Were Here, became her breakthrough CD and soon was certified "platinum" in Canada. Her 2004 release, All of Our Names, included the hit single "Almost" which made the top 20 on the Canadian pop charts. Her fourth album, I'm a Mountain, was released in Canada on November 8, 2005 and in the United States in February 2006. It went on to be nominated for the 2006 Polaris Music Prize, a jury-selected $20,000 cash prize for the Canadian album of the year.
The astonishing clarity of Harmer's voice lends absolute integrity to each note. Her intensely personal lyrics which shed light on her relationships and heartbreaks are illuminating but never depressive. After just one performance you will understand why online bloggers are writing that Sarah is "one of Canada's national treasures..." and proclaiming her work as the "ultimate comfort food."
In Silverado, a cut from the new CD, there is an air of familiarity that IS comforting -- but not boring and when Sarah asks the question “…can I skip across the dust of my own moon” she makes us believe that yes…we can.
The title of the CD “oh little fire” comes from the lyrics of the song she calls One Match.
Oh little fire sleepy in the coals open up the door see a
flame unfold. Stoke with words you say and the way
you say them. Little fire awaits for you to get close to him…
There is something of Sarah’s style that pulls us in and makes us feel snug, cozy, inwardly retrospective while at the same time open to possibilities that we allow to exist in the comfort of warmth and familiarity --as if the little fire in all of us just needed to hear Sarah Harmer in order to release the resident kindness and affection we all harbor, even for an old lover who has scorned us. Perhaps it is the honesty inherent in her voice and her lyrics that make us want to be right out there with her -- front and center, yet still protected enough to expose the possibilities that vulnerability allows. Don’t miss being there with her at the Firehouse July 9.
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