It’s a time of uncertainty in the music business. Caught between risking some off-the-wall experiment or cranking out “Listen As I Repeat Myself”, artists and their art drift toward the half-hearted. Refreshingly, Sarah Harmer just digs deeper and discovers, with each new album, elements of a voice that can last.
Unlike her previous two discs — polished marvels of reflective pop in their own right — I’m A Mountain finds Harmer returning to the folk-grass settings of her solo debut. The growth since that creditable first bow is striking. The framework remains traditional, but the spirit is understated newgrass, with better melodies. From the taut instrumental work of her acoustic band on the rollicking passages (“Luther’s Got The Blues”, the propulsive breaks in “I’m A Mountain”) to the sensuous sway of the quitter dances (“Oleander” and the delicious French treat “Salamandre”), the music is consistently engaging and ageless. Yet Harmer’s environmental concern, which serves as a thematic cornerstone to this project, provides a level of immediacy as well.
There’s also a lovely cover of Dolly Parton’s “Will He Be Waiting For Me?”, and though Harmer may lack its author’s peerless range, she delivers a version with her own sense of the singer’s charge. Such vocal sensitivity is also evident in the way she prepares, with beautifully melodic lines and tasteful grace notes, the dramatic half-spoken codas of “Goin’ Out” and “How Deep In The Valley”. Such never-mannered craft sets this singer apart from all but a few of her contemporaries.