Georgia Harmer

Twenty-two year-old Toronto-based musician Georgia Harmer will release her debut album, Stay in Touch, next Friday April 22nd on Arts & Crafts. Today, she unveils a new single/video, “Top Down.” Following a string of resonating singles, “Top Down” is a sparkling, cathartic anthem written for the highway. Harmer’s voice is honeyed over subtly distorted guitar tones, as she sings of feeling hopeless while trying to help a friend out of a dark place. With lyrics that evoke feelings of incapability and insignificance, Harmer captures the longing for “top down” action, both personally, politically and environmentally. The accompanying self-directed video features footage of Harmer wandering around a closed down theme park on Toronto Island. “‘Top Down’ is about feeling frustrated by my own powerlessness,” says Harmer. “It’s about feeling very young and small, and not being able to control or change anything happening around me, in my personal life, and in the bigger picture. I was trying to help a friend out of a dark place, and struggling with my own type of dark place that goes along with coming of age and wondering – what exactly is my role in this big, sad, beautiful world?”

With a wisdom and poise that belies her youthful age, Harmer has penned an emotionally resonant collection of songs that articulate the ways in which even the most fleeting experiences can forge bonds between strangers, create families out of friends, and one by one form the joys and sorrows that make up a life. Sonically, Stay in Touch spans everything from intimate folk and strummy country to sophisticated jazz and pop-kissed rock. Harmer and her band created musical landscapes that live up to the lyrical richness of the songs.

Stay in Touch is an unforgettable statement from a new artist with a heartbreakingly simple message: when you stay in touch with the experiences that have shaped you, you stay in touch with yourself. The album is full of romanticism—a rare quality in an irony-soaked culture. For Harmer, this is a record about “staying in touch with the aspects of yourself, your life, the world, that keep you aware of what’s most important. Whether that’s people, relationships, deep feelings, the value of togetherness and support. It’s about finding the balance between holding on and letting go, between the beauty of the world and the pain in the world.”