Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer releases her second solo album All of Our Names today. The album is the long-delayed follow-up to the critically lauded You Were Here, which Rolling Stone called "marvelously compelling" and Time voted best debut CD of the year.

Harmer began recording the eleven-track Names in her rural home in Quaker Valley, Ontario, in November 2002. She bought studio equipment and enlisted her boyfriend/keyboardist/soundman Marty Kinack to co-produce. "We really went to town on the wiring," she says. "Marty spent about five days soldering cables."

As the album neared completion, the farm girl with the crystal clear voice and picturesque narratives actually opted to record two songs -- including the single "Almost" -- in an industrial strip mall in suburban Toronto with Gavin Brown. Harmer's former drummer is now a rising producer, with the breakthrough successes of Canadian bands Three Days Grace, Billy Talent and Thornley.

"I love Gavin's drumming and I thought, 'Maybe I should step out of this comfortable zone that I've been in,'" she says. "I'd recorded 'Almost' at home and I had played drums on it, and it was more laidback. I wouldn't say it's bombastic now, but it's got more energy."

The sprightly pop song, which Harmer describes as "a classic crush song about unexplored possibilities," is picking up steam in the U.S., where it's been adult contemporary radio's most added song three weeks in a row. Harmer has begun lining up dates for a spring North American tour, to kick off April 9th in New York.

Sarah Harmer tour dates:

4/9: New York, Tribeca Rock Club
4/13: Ferndale, MI, Magic Bag
4/14: Chicago, Martyrs'
4/16: Pittsburgh, Rex Theater
4/17: Alexandria, VA, The Birchmere
4/19: Philadelphia, Theatre of Living Arts
4/20: New York, Tribeca Rock Club
4/21: Boston, Paradise Rock Club
4/23: Portland, ME, Big Easy
4/24: Burlington, VT, Club Metronome
4/26: Toronto, Winter Garden Theater
4/29: Montreal, Cabaret Du Plateau
5/1: Rochester, NY, Water Street Music Hall
5/2: Buffalo, NY, The Tralf Music Hall

KAREN BLISS
(March 23, 2004)