Zoe Records
2004
All Of Our Names
About This Album
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.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8)

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