Sarah Harmer: Majestic 'Mountain'

Sarah Harmer
I'm a Mountain
Cold Snap Records/Zoe Records

With "I'm A Mountain," Sarah Harmer returns to the playful warmth of "You Were Here," similarly blending on one CD gorgeous vocals and bouncy rhythms, acoustic instruments and electric, and complex harmonies and the magic of just her voice alone. Instead of resulting in a jumble, the sum of all these strong parts makes for one amazing whole.

Track 1, "The Ring," draws you in right away with clever lyrics -- a boxing metaphor that could easily veer toward cliche but chooses not to. It's followed up by "I Am Aglow," which features a bouncy melody that reminded me of "Uniform Grey" off "You Were Here" -- the very song that introduced me to Sarah Harmer in the first place. Far from being a casual introduction, hearing her folksy, velvety voice -- like no one else's -- during a spin of "Uniform Grey" on public radio while I was driving down a South Carolina highway was love at first sight. I was completely smitten as soon as I procured the CD and gave it my first listen all the way through. That love was tested with "All of Our Names," which offered a bit of a different, slicker vibe but one I could also get behind. But with "Mountain," I'm convinced we are forever, me and Sarah.

Picking out highlights from this CD is well nigh impossible. To be highlights, there have to be lowlights, and I just can't seem to find one. The beauty of Sarah's CDs is that they bear listening to over and over -- one song you might have spaced out on in early listenings will suddenly grab you by the throat five spins later. And a lyric from a song you swore you had memorized already will suddenly stick out where it hadn't before and make the song new again.

But one track on "Mountain" that grabbed me right away -- probably because I already know it -- is a cover of Dolly Parton's "Will He Be Waiting for Me?" Now, I love Dolly, but I almost always hate covers of her songs. "Jolene," for instance. Despite my admiration for Mindy Smith and Rhonda Vincent, I can't stand either of their treatments of "Jolene." They just pale against the original, and the covers add nothing new, in my eyes. But Sarah's "Will He Be Waiting for Me?" is killer. Airy, meek and lovely, it puts a pensive, vulnerable spin on Dolly's more forceful original.

Now, I could go into great detail on Sarah's gift for lyrics, or I could just sum it up thus: Only Sarah Harmer could write a song called "Escarpment Blues," whose lyrics read like a speech before a city council (seriously, it'd work), and make it just achingly beautiful and moving.

Speaking of lyrics, my one and only gripe on this CD is the lack of liner notes and lyrics, a strange departure since both "You Were Here" and "All of Our Names" came with the full treatment. Thankfully, however, Sarah's Web site has all of the lyrics for "I'm A Mountain."

So Sarah Harmer may be a mountain, but she's not the cold, unknowable kind. She's inviting like a meadow, wise like an old forest, playful like the waves on a beach. But she wants to be a mountain, so we'll give her that. It's an easy climb, though -- nothing impassible here -- and the view from the top is amazing. You'll like this "Mountain" so much, it may just become a permanent, immovable landmark in your CD collection's heavy rotation list.