Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Q | |
The album was warmly received. TIME ranked You Were Here in its year-end Top Ten list, calling it the year's best debut album.
Harmer also appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman on October 2, 2001, in an appearance in which stage manager Biff Henderson jumped in to sing impromptu backing vocals. She had originally been scheduled to appear the previous week, but was bumped when Rudy Giuliani's first post-9/11 appearance ran overtime.
You Were Here was named the 24th greatest Canadian album of all time in Bob Mersereau's 2007 book The Top 100 Canadian Albums.
Music critic Lisa M. Smith, writing for Allmusic, praised the album, and wrote of Harmer that "it is certain that she is an artist choosing wisely from a great scope of colors. With a pleasing and misleading start, the rollicking opening track asserts its individuality with a Vaudevillian clarinet, keeping one foot in Kinks pop and one in some elusive species of country rock." She describes the album as one of a pleasing ebb and flow. "Songs may begin with a soft acoustic, then unfold assuredly toward their climax. Various instruments add character now and then, such as a muted trumpet or a harmonica, and the energy level can sway between a lullaby and full pop treatment with a definite destination… the album as a whole feels sincere, answering to a variety of moods and whims. It is a work of quality, from the songwriting clear to the production." Rolling Stone gave the album 3.5 of 5 stars, stating it contained "Plainly hooky, tender-but-tough songs...Harmer lovingly chronicles the rough-and-tumble of real-life romance....a marvelously compelling meditation"
Q gave You Were Here 3 of 5 stars and called it "Lounge jazz, drum loops and lead guitar chops support a vocalist whose lyrical panache...marks her out from the crowd."
In an interview with No Depression, Paul Cantin called it "a welcome break from the Lilith school of flinchy girl singers. Her music is at once heartfelt and hardy, sensitive and sanguine."
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