Are You Gone marks acclaimed Canadian songwriter Sarah Harmer’s sixth studio album, and her first new record since Oh Little Fire in 2010. She describes the long-awaited album as a spiritual successor to her 2000 commercial breakthrough album You Were Here.
Harmer spent the past decade a fixture in local politics, working as an environmental activist and co-founding the Protecting Escarpment Rural Land (PERL) organization and engaged in preventing quarry development in the Niagara Escarpment. During that time she still managed to gradually write music and playing a small show now and then. While pondering the “ghosts” of loss, capitalism’s gluttony and music’s potential as a public platform, Sarah got to work on Are You Gone, her most sophisticated record to date.