Folkie meandering amid the bluegrass

Sarah Harmer

“I’m a Mountain” (Zoe/Rounder)

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Here’s one of the few musicians who sounds as though she’d be as comfortable singing the songs of Edith Piaf as those of Bill Monroe or Jimmie Rodgers. She doesn’t actually do either on her sixth album (in stores today), but the Canadian singer-songwriter hints that she might when she detours from the solid bluegrass and country foundation of her latest with an utterly charming French-language performance of a children’s song, “Salamandre,” which puts her squarely into Parisian cabaret territory.

She’s chiefly interested here in songs of her own with a staunchly traditional bent, such as “Oleander,” a disarming paean to the beautiful but poisonous plant, and the title track, in which she takes a stab at doing Dylan doing traditional folk. These point the way to “Escarpment Blues,” a wistful eco-lament with political overtones that, in spirit, is a spiritual descendant of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.”

Harmer happily takes up the liberal folkie mantle passed down by the likes of Mitchell and even Woody Guthrie, not so much banging a drum for her causes, but gently strumming an acoustic guitar to get her ideas across. Her girlish delivery -- peaking with “Salamandre” -- often invokes a fetching vocal hiccup into falsetto, keeping the album engagingly conversational and nonpreachy.

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