Almost five years after her last album, Sarah Harmer is finally back with a surprise new beautifully visual video to her upbeat new track "Captive," off her fifth album "Oh Little Fire," which finds the much loved Canadian singer sounding positively reinvigorated, out now on Cold Snap Records. The first album in five years, Harmer sounds reinvigorated and positively charged. You will see Harmer row through a dream Venice past a Victrola raft and below a fleet of floating gentlemen with umbrellas as she serenades awkward love in this video.Harmer gained her first exposure to the musician's lifestyle as a teenager, when her older sister Mary started taking her to concerts by the then-unknown Tragically Hip. In incorporating roots, pop, and folk sensibilities, Harmer performs what might be called "homemade" music, writing intensely personal lyrics about relationship anticipation and angst, setting them afloat on simple guitars, drum loops, and cello and clarinet solos. Mostly, Harmer peddles poetic ruminations about emotional journeys, cast in pleasing metaphors. From stories of menacing shadows to boundless faith, you won't mistake it for background music.
Nowhere is that more evident than the album's irresistible lead single, "Captive," a particularly bright and affecting little masterpiece that seems destined for chart success, on which Harmer is set free by asking a new flame to "fence me in." On "Captive," the jaunty, shimmering first single, she coyly suggests that her hurt "darling" should "forget the way I acted / It's just I'm out of practice." "It appeals to my love of Rock and Roll and the immediacy of pop production," Harmer says of the song. "I wanted to make a record somebody could crank up on their car stereo driving down a highway."
"Captive" is a delightful female-driven pop song that revolves around the idea of love in a way that is far from overbearing. Not once does she mention the word 'love' but through lyrical images, instrumental layers, and of course her welcoming vocals, the message most assuredly comes across as such. "I want to be held captive" speaks to the rare, contrary idea regarding romantic status and views of what would call co-dependency, that is fine enough on its own, but this track in and of itself seems to call to the idea of keeping one's heart open, despite however many attempts at love gone awry. We've all been there, and if you haven't, be prepared for the roller coaster ride of your life.
"Captive" is also a sweet song that speaks simply to love's desire and the hope of a future – "as long as there's a view to look to, fence me in and keep me close to you" – speaking to the ideal independent person in all of us who will hopefully succumb to that alien entity captured in rom-coms and harlequin romances called love, or something like it at the very least. And perhaps that "or something like it" is the ideal, not something that sticks to the bottom of one's shoes like bubble gum. Harmer's lyrics and musical style, past and present, has remained consistent – dreamy, layered, and complex, challenging listeners to feel something beneath the surface.
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