{"id":148447,"date":"2010-07-12T18:11:16","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T18:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socancom100stg.wpenginepowered.com\/a-new-wind\/"},"modified":"2010-07-12T18:11:16","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T18:11:16","slug":"a-new-wind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/a-new-wind\/","title":{"rendered":"A new wind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Les traductions pour les articles avant l\u2019automne 2013 ne sont pas disponibles pour le moment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sarah<\/strong> Harmer<\/strong>\u2019s new album \u2014 her first in five years \u2014 kicks off with the unsettling sound of crackling distortion followed by some driving electric guitar. \u201cA new wind will blow through everything,\u201d Harmer sings, somewhat ominously, \u201cthrough everything I know.\u201d It\u2019s the dramatic opening of a recording that represents a stark shift away from the celebrated singer-songwriter\u2019s last studio release, I\u2019m a Mountain<\/em>. Where that Polaris Prize-nominated album was steeped in bittersweet bluegrass, Harmer\u2019s new oh little fire <\/em>is a defiantly rockier and, mostly, happier affair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always loved rock music and repetitive guitars and I do think this album sounds like some of my work with Weeping Tile,\u201d says Harmer, referring to the scrappy alt-rock band she formed in the early 1990s. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a departure from I\u2019m a Mountain<\/em>. The approach was quite new, and my co-producer, Gavin Brown<\/strong>, and I recorded it completely differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

For one thing, Harmer and Brown (Metric, Billy Talent) recorded much of the album in Toronto, which may explain the recording\u2019s more rugged and urban feel, especially on urgent, peppy songs like \u201cCaptive\u201d and \u201cThe City.\u201d \u201cI lived in Toronto on and off for a year and a half, I have friends and family in Toronto and my parents live on the other side of the city, near Burlington,\u201d says Harmer. \u201cSo the city has been a part of my life for the last few years, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is new territory for the rural-loving Harmer, whose home in the countryside outside of Kingston, Ont., has inspired memorable songs about boat rides on lagoons and moonlit walks along wintry roads. But that\u2019s not to suggest that oh little fire <\/em>isn\u2019t still rooted in some lyrical observations of pastoral settings: \u201cNew Loneliness\u201d offers striking, un-city-like images of a canoe trip on a waterway, a dragonfly on a cattail and \u201ca wandering white-tailed deer.\u201d And the alt-country twang of \u201cSilverado,\u201d written by Trevor Henderson<\/strong>, is closer in feel to I\u2019m a Mountain<\/em> than anything else on the new album.<\/p>\n

Harmer played drums in Henderson\u2019s Kingston-based band Music Maul before starting work on oh little fire<\/em>, where she added drums to three tracks, including opener \u201cThe Thief,\u201d something she hasn\u2019t done since 2004\u2019s Juno-winning All of Our Names<\/em>. She also sang backup on albums by Howie Beck<\/strong>, Great Lakes Swimmers and Neko Case<\/strong>, who returned the favour by singing on \u201cSilverado.\u201d But mostly, her time since I\u2019m a Mountain <\/em>was devoted to political and environmental causes, including PERL (Protecting Escarpment Rural Land), the lobbying group she co-founded. \u201cI wasn\u2019t super focused or in the throes of music for a long time,\u201d Harmer admits, and her songwriting suffered. As she confesses on \u201cCaptive,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m just so out of practice and distracted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown, it turns out, cracked a much-needed whip. \u201cI\u2019m a loiterer and Gavin\u2019s not,\u201d says Harmer. \u201cI had these songs that kind of pitter-pattered around in my head and I was mulling around about how to get them across. Gavin can make decisions very instinctively and has a lot of energy, so he really pushed me to finish writing them. We were a good mix.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the songs came to fruition, a strong lyrical theme emerged involving embers, flames and ashes. \u201cThat\u2019s why I called the album oh little fire<\/em>,\u201d explains Harmer, \u201cbecause of the idea of keeping something burning and tending to a fire. I keep a wood stove going all the time at my house. It\u2019s the idea of the pilot light that everyone has in them and just tending to that life force.\u201d Romantically, she adds, without giving specifics, the album chronicles a \u201cblazing inferno, a meltdown and then a kind of rekindling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harmer\u2019s activism sparked the song \u201cEscarpment Blues\u201d on I\u2019m a Mountain<\/em> and her interest in saving the Niagara Escarpment continues to run deep. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to protect the land a couple of farms over from my parents\u2019 where I grew up,\u201d she says. \u201cThese are provincially significant wetlands, forests and endangered species\u2019 habitats. Plus, there is a whole archaeological element. They just found post moulds of a 1620s longhouse and French ceramic trading beads two fields over from us. It really dramatizes history, both natural and cultural, in a way I\u2019d never known before.\u201d<\/p>\n

That historical interest, Harmer reveals, may fuel future songwriting. \u201cI\u2019ve been learning about the Neutral Indians and a woman they called the Mother of Nations, who was the Neutral\u2019s peace queen,\u201d says Harmer. \u201cShe helped the Iroquois Confederacy to spread the word of peace between warring tribes. That\u2019s a timeless message, especially with Canada\u2019s history as a peace-keeping nation. I\u2019d really like to write a song or two about that, if I can, in the same way that Bruce Cockburn<\/strong> brings so much passion to his subject matter.\u201d Clearly, a new wind is<\/em> blowing through Sarah Harmer\u2019s world \u2014 fanning the flames of her richly creative muse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Harmer\u2019s latest album shows a shift away from bluegrass and towards rock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-non-categorise"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}