Sarah Harmer - You Were Here
List Price:
Our Price: $6.99
You Save: $10.99 (61%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more new music releases
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Music CD Cover
Artist: Sarah HarmerEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2000-08-29
Music Label: Zoe Records
Soundtracks:
- Around This Corner
- Basement Apt.
- The Hideout
- Capsized
- Lodestar
- Weakened State
- Don't Get Your Back Up
- Open Window (The Wedding Song)
- Uniform Grey
- Coffee Stain
- You Were Here
- Everytime
Free Music Notes for You Were Here
Free Music Review: from Music Reviews Quarterly
Hit: 5 Stars
It's all like a fresh breath of summer in the middle of February. Comfortable and easy and so good. You Were Here does sound like someplace you've been, if only when some particularly good song was playing on the radio the first time you drove away from the house of someone you just realized you had fallen in love with. Warm joy and the sense that it just can't get any better than this. Something like that happens when listening to Sarah Harmer the first time. Subsequent hearings of You Were Here does nothing to diminish that feeling, they just ingrain it. Here is a woman so incredibly at ease with what's she doing that she seems oblivious to anything but the world she is creating with her music. The voice is so natural and easy; no pretense, no desire to impress with range or precision, just naturally effective in all those areas which voices are judged by without any seeming effort. The songs seem just as effortless and comfortable. They fit only obliquely into a roots, folk/pop vein with enough genre-slipping variations to make no description totally accurate. One second Lucinda Williams comes to mind, the next second Kim Richey, the next no one at all. No one sounds like Sarah Harmer, and while the songs and styles keep teasing with some connections to something you know by heart, they all slip away like trying to net a fish in an aquarium. Once you give up trying to make the connections - at least momentarily - you can spend time listening to something intriguingly different where suddenly a clarinet or a gentle trumpet comes in just enough to take the direction a song seemed comfortably sailing toward into a brand new harbor. Such a song - and there are a good ten of them of the twelve that fit this description - is "Lodestar." A lilting little melody spins gently off an acoustic guitar while a "dreamy electric guitar" (the liner notes' description) just as gently underpins it and Harmer sings with an intimate, languid understatement. This all rolls along nicely, picking up simply a cello accent and the briefest hint of a trumpet for another round after the first series of verses and chorus, and things seem destined to roll to a conclusion after a little more quiet trumpet accents. Perfect gentle and alluring for over three minutes, and then the cello begins cutting in with a steady pulse, drums come in with an equally steady beat, the intensity of the sound picks up, Harmer harmonizes with herself, and the trumpet becomes steady, only to be lost a bit in the wash of overall sound. Then a gentle fade-out. Now, that's not actually all that huge and innovative a trick, but what is unlikely is how Harmer takes the lilting quality of the lullaby she creates and then lets it develop a completely different tone for the final minute or so. Most performers would have been content with the prettiness of the melody they had concocted, but Harmer gets two songs out of it, all with an almost seamless transition. Sarah Harmer's ingenuity could be that ability to see a song in two or three lights at the same time. She can get a tough aggression out of a song like "Weakened State" while holding it to a pleasing pop melody section that, as she has already proven, could exist just as well with an acoustic setting. In fact, the song breaks down to an easy drums, cello, and bass section which seems very natural before building up once again to the electric guitar energy it began with. Then there's the drum loop and acoustic guitar intro to "Basement Apartment," again not totally new in concept but different at least and refreshing when combined with the pop roll of the melody line. Or the choppy electric guitar rhythm of "Around the Corner" with its clarinet counterpart and the catchy pop-ness of the chorus which all gets together to create of a hybrid of the forties, eighties, and right now. There's the juxtaposition of track seven, "Don't Get Your Back Up," an alternative rock/country/pop concoction which, had it not been for Lucinda Williams trying her hand at such a sound, would have had no precedent, with track eight, "Open Window," a song which has more an air of a European cabaret (trumpet, acoustic guitar, Wurlitzer, brushed drums) than anything Lucinda's Southwest sound ever considered. The mix on You Were Here is impressive. In so many ways Sarah Harmer is a pop songwriter in the classic sense of the songwriting duos like Bacharach/David, Rodgers/Hammerstein, and Harburg/Arlen. To that she brings a singer/songwriter's perspective, working these tunes to less cluttered arrangements with an acoustic guitar often the center. Then she takes that approach and uses the wisdom gained from the edgier, more idiosyncratic arrangements of new performers like Lucinda and Gillian Welch and producers like T.Bone Burnett and Daniel Lanois. The combination, probably impossible to point to precisely at any individual moment, works beautifully. The simplicity of all the elements in themselves keeps the center of Sarah Harmer's work so intimate and comfortable, while the complexity of the way the pieces are assembled forces the brain to operate, keeping the comfort from disintegrating into a sugary mess. Certainly some ground has been broken to lead to what Sarah Harmer has created here. Emmy Lou, Victoria Williams, Gillian, Buddy Miller, Steve Earle - they all have contributed pieces which contributed to the collective thinking among performers, players, and producers (although Harmer is one of the two producers; the other is Peter Prilesnik) which created You Were Here. The trick is that, no matter how much or long precedents may have played a part, putting it all together in a unique, fresh way is a major accomplishment. In fact to minorly succeed at such a task would be a major accomplishment. To end up with a work as brilliant and complete as this defies expectations. Suddenly, like when Gillian Welch's Revival or Emmy Lou's Wrecking Ball or Lucinda's Car Wheels of a Gravel Road appeared, a new standard is reached. Every singer/songwriter out there can now look and understand that it is possible to combine numerous seemingly different elements and get them to mesh into a compellingly different whole. You Were Here is a benchmark recording, Sarah Harmer a benchmark performer. Make no mistake about it. And You Were Here when it happened - remember that.
Alternative Rock Music CDs
Music Genres
Top music charts in Alternative Rock Music CDs
Bouncing Souls - Maniacal LaughterRelease date: 1996-01-26; Music CD
Best price: $30.00
Blondie - Parallel LinesRelease date: 1994-07-29; Music CD
Best price: $397.77
Doors - L.A. WomanRelease date: 1993-04-09; Music CD
Best price: $199.99
Amon Duul - Phallus DeiRelease date: 1997-04-08; Music CD
Price in other shops:
Tangerine Dream - MelroseRelease date: 1990-10-02; Music CD
Best price: $74.98
Tangerine Dream - Private Music of Tangerine DreamRelease date: 1992-11-10; Music CD
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
![Ska Explosion [VHS] Image](/images/Ska-Explosion-VHS-6303381014-X.jpg){kind=small}
Ska Explosion [VHS]Cleopatra; Release date: 1995-02-28; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $14.99
Price in other shops:
![Little Earthquakes [VHS] Image](/images/Little-Earthquakes-VHS-6302488664-X.jpg){kind=small}
Little Earthquakes [VHS]Atlantic / Wea; Release date: 1992-11-10; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $7.00
Price in other shops:
Exileby Geoffrey Oryema
Music CD
Best price: $4.95
![Louder Than Live [VHS] Image](/images/Louder-Than-Live-VHS-6301627865-X.jpg){kind=small}
Soundgarden - Louder Than Live [VHS]A&M Video; Release date: 1991-07-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
Top Rated Albums
Weeping Tile - Cold SnapRelease date: 2001-02-16; Music CD
Best price: $9.99
Price in other shops:
Meaghan Smith - The Cricket's OrchestraRelease date: 2010-02-09; Music CD
Best price: $7.79
Price in other shops:
Sarah Harmer - Songs for ClemRelease date: 2007-01-08; Music CD
Best price: $27.98
Price in other shops:
Kathleen Edwards - Asking for FlowersBaker & Taylor; Release date: 2008-03-04; Music CD
Best price: $9.26
Price in other shops:
Sarah Harmer - I'm a Mountain (Dig)Release date: 2006-02-07; Music CD
Best price: $10.29
Price in other shops:
Sarah Harmer - All of Our NamesRelease date: 2004-03-23; Music CD
Best price: $8.23
Price in other shops:
Kathleen Edwards - VoyageurRelease date: 2012-01-17; Music CD
Best price: $9.28
Price in other shops:
Kathleen Edwards - Back to MeBaker & Taylor; Release date: 2005-03-01; Music CD
Best price: $7.85
Price in other shops:
Kathleen Edwards - FailerRelease date: 2003-01-14; Music CD
Best price: $8.95
Price in other shops:
Sarah Harmer - Oh Little FireRelease date: 2010-06-21; Music CD
Best price: $4.80
Price in other shops: