Sarah Harmer - All of our names [2004] [Dodecahedron]


Sarah Harmer (born November 12, 1970 in Burlington, Ontario) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and activist. 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. At the age of 17, she was invited to join a Toronto band, The Saddletramps. For three years, she juggled The Saddletramps with her studies in philosophy and women's studies at Queen's University.

After leaving The Saddletramps, Harmer put together a band of her own with several Kingston, Ontario musicians, and settled on the name Weeping Tile. The band released its first independent cassette in 1994. Soon afterward, they signed to a major label, and the cassette was re-released in 1995 as EP. The band quickly became a popular draw on the rock club circuit and on campus radio with their subsequent albums, but never broke through to the mainstream, and broke up in 1998 after being dropped from their label.

Also in 1998, Harmer recorded a set of pop standards as a Christmas gift for her father. After hearing it, her friends and family convinced her to release it as an album, and in 1999 she released it independently as Songs for Clem. Harmer quickly began working on another album, and in 2000, she released You Were Here.

A poppier, more laid-back effort than her work with Weeping Tile, You Were Here became Harmer's mainstream breakthrough, spawning the hits "Basement Apartment" and "Don't Get Your Back Up". The album also appeared on many critics' year-end lists, including TIME magazine, which called it the year's best debut album. It was eventually certified platinum for sales of 100,000 copies in Canada. Almost half of the album (including both of its major hits) consisted of songs she had previously recorded with Weeping Tile or The Saddletramps.

In 2004, she released All of Our Names. The album included the singles "Almost", which made the top 20 on Canadian pop charts, and "Pendulums".

Her fourth album, I'm a Mountain, was released in Canada on November 8, 2005 and in the United States in February 2006. It was nominated for the 2006 Polaris Music Prize, a jury-selected $20,000 cash prize for the Canadian album of the year.

Harmer has also appeared as a guest vocalist on albums by other artists, including Blue Rodeo, Great Big Sea, Rheostatics, Bruce Cockburn, Luther Wright and the Wrongs, Skydiggers, The Weakerthans, Neko Case and Great Lake Swimmers.

In February 2007, Harmer received three Juno Award nominations. I'm a Mountain was up for Best Adult Alternative Album and her DVD Escarpment Blues was up for Best Music DVD. Sarah herself was also up for Songwriter of the Year for her work on "I Am Aglow", "Oleander" and "Escarpment Blues". Also in 2007, she reunited with Weeping Tile to record a song, "Public Square", for the Rheostatics tribute album The Secret Sessions.

Harmer has admitted to having done some recording for a fifth album in October 2008 on her blog.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Harmer

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Note: Re-upload. Rescuing an old torrent from a long gone tracker.

Artist: Sarah Harmer
Country: Canada
Years active: 1987 – Present
Album: All of our names (2004)
Genre: Adult Alternative, Pop, Folk.

Sarah Harmer - Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Piano, Synthesizer, Drums, Glockenspiel, Wurlitzer, Juno
Gavin Brown - Guitar, Drums, Wurlitzer, Baritone Guitar
Howie Beck - Bass, Drums
Jim Bryson - Guitar
Kevin Fox - Cello
Fuzzy - Drums
Maury LaFoy - Bass, Upright Bass
John Obercian - Drums
Benji Perosin - Trumpet
Ian Thornley - Guitar


Review by Allmusic: Sarah Harmer's house sounds like a cool place to visit. With instruments and recording equipment in every room and traveling bands sleeping over, the place is filled as much with music as it is with warm sunlight. Harmer embraces this. "Engineered, mixed and produced by Sarah Harmer and Martin Davis Kinack at her house," the liners for All of Our Names state simply. And with just a few mixing and mastering tweaks, the album walked out the front door. There's fully formed adult alternative stuff here, from the robust head-nod lilt of "Almost," to "New Enemy"'s more stately melody. But listen to those drums on the latter, and the offhand chimes of the acoustic guitar -- close your eyes and you're in the Harmer house, foot on the front of the kick drum so it doesn't slide across the floor. This immediacy helps sell All of Our Names, since music like this can be smothered by over-production. It supports Harmer's smoky, vaguely Joni Mitchell-ish vocals, and the offhandedly prescient characterizations and observations in her lyrics, and makes the jumble of guitars, Wurlitzer, bass, percussion, and occasional horns that much more comfy. Remember Songs for Clem? Yeah, it's a little like that, only with a few more mics and a mixing board in the closet. Is that falling rain in the background of "Greeting Card Aisle"? The song's resignation is palpable and strong over the urgent acoustic guitar line, the one that accelerates and slows like an old car in winter. "Have you got me in your bleeding heart file/Next to Lady Luck?" Harmer asks. "Well this Light of your Life has drawn the blind," and you can just hear her bitter exhale of air. "Silver Road" is much happier, a bit reminiscent of Lucinda Williams, while "Things to Forget" adds some electro-organic synth work into the mix, setting up the sparer final section of Names. The sun, the weather, cars and roads -- they appear again thematically for "Things." "Can we pull over to the shoulder so I can write this song?" she asks, as autumn fades into the winter holidays. "Took It All" is spare, the sonic separation between its drums, organ, and guitar perfect under Harmer's starkly beautiful vocal. There's a chance this one was recorded in the wee hours, as the living room's lights spilled into the shadowy night. "Tether" might be the most personal thing here, its lyrics in the first person, angry and downcast all at once. She misses someone, but she has the house and its warmth as comfort, and that's something. Listening to the homey, gorgeous All of Our Names, we can vouch for that.

Track listing:

01. "Pendulums" – 3:26
02. "Almost" – 3:57
03. "Greeting Card Aisle" – 4:37
04. "New Enemy" – 3:54
05. "Silver Road" – 3:38
06. "Dandelions in Bullet Holes" – 6:02
07. "Things to Forget" – 3:34
08. "Came on Lion" – 3:10
09. "Took it All" – 4:41
10. "Tether" – 3:21
11. "Go to Sleep" – 3:38


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