TORONTO — Sarah Harmer’s new CD — her first in five years — is a buoyant, road trip-ready rocker.
Who would have guessed it reflects one of the toughest periods of her life?
“I did get to know some pain,” Harmer said during a recent interview at a Toronto pool hall. “I’d been free of that for a long time and then it kind of hit me, and I think it was maybe just coming to me. I don’t know if it was karmic, or if everybody has to get all ends of the emotional spectrum doled out to them at some point in their life, you know?
“But yeah, I experienced some things in the last couple years that I hadn’t ever before. I hope it kind of humbled me a little.”
She declined to go into further detail about the experiences, so curious listeners will be left to parse her new disc, Oh Little Fire, for clues.
The fire in the title is significant, and carries a double meaning for the 39-year-old Harmer — a strong advocate for preserving the environment.
“I heat my home with wood . . . and you can have the best materials, the driest wood, but you put too big a log on it and you can bury it, and you don’t give it enough air, it does not spark,” she explained.
“I just found that was really metaphorical for relationships. You just have to gingerly kind of care for them and tend to them, and they can really fuel for a long time. I don’t know if I have mastered that part.”
Harmer did feel, to a certain extent, that she had mastered the musical ground traversed on her first four records, however.
The Thief opens the record by juxtaposing the fluttering beauty of Harmer’s voice with propulsive guitar strumming and a bridge awash in noise — a new sound for Harmer. Captive follows immediately in the same vein, with a driving bass thump running below another gorgeous vocal.
Elsewhere, Harmer does settle into a quieter groove, from the austere New Loneliness to brittle closer It Will Sail, which Harmer said almost didn’t make the album.
“I was questioning at some times in the recording whether or not there was going to be enough soul or feel or magic in it,” she conceded. “But as soon as we got the record and the songs mixed, and I was able to have them in my car and out of the studio, I was still like, ‘Oh yeah, this has a lot of feel.”’