Sarah Harmer – All Of Our Names

The comfort of nature and the incessant passage of time are recurrent themes on Sarah Harmer’s new album, and that shouldn’t be a surprise.

All Of Our Names arrives about four years after the making of her breakthrough 2000 release You Were Here; the new album was largely recorded at Harmer’s home in the semi-rural splendor of Kingston, Ontario. The pleasure of the great outdoors and the tug-of-war between duty and procrastination (to get on with following up a hit album, for example) surface so often, All Of Our Names almost qualifies as a concept album.

On the opening track, “Pendulums”, the twin themes are introduced as Harmer coos a rural idyll (“The distant lights are twinkling/It means there is a wind/That blows the trees against themselves”), then notes, “I am a good little clock/I’m ticking off the time” and lazily croons “I’m sleeping in.”

As seductive a portrayal of dawdling as that opening track is, Harmer hits a more ominous depiction of time wasted on “Things To Forget”: “We can make a list of things/To forget, the false starts and the loose strings/The feelings of regret that ring/On a day that you haven’t done much of anything.” The somber “Took It All” seems to draw a provocative parallel between the commercial expectations for Harmer’s career and the wider rapacious nature of the western world. “Tether” contrasts splendid isolation against the artist’s desire to get on with the act of artistic creation: “On the top of a pile, another melody is aching for a few pretty words.”

Harmer has eschewed the loops and instantly appealing surfaces of “Basement Apt.” from You Were Here, instead undressing her sound to its ravishing rudiments. And while there’s nothing here that quite reaches the dramatic punch of the latter album’s standout songs “Capsized” and “Lodestar”, All Of Our Names confirms that Harmer is, by any other name, a formidable, singular talent who has amply rewarded the patience of her fans.