With her first album in five years, oh little fire, in stores Tuesday, Sarah Harmer has plugged herself back in -- in more ways than one.

Unlike her previous three introspective folk-pop albums -- 2000's You Were Here, 2004's All of Our Names and 2005's I'm a Mountain -- the critically acclaimed Burlington, Ont., singer-songwriter decided to amp up her sound again, harkening back to her days with Kingston, Ont., rockers Weeping Tile.

"Driving around listening to songs that are produced in a big way like even a Killers song, like some anthemic tune, I was like, 'I want to do that,' " said Harmer, 39, in Toronto recently where she plays a sold-out show Tuesday night at Palais Royale before a major Canadian tour in July and August.

"It's satisfying. And I wanted to play that kind of thing live. I have a great drummer, Kieran Adams. And I just thought, 'I want to focus on the rhythmic side of things and higher energy side of things.' And so I called Gavin Brown (Metric) because he's good at that stuff."

Harmer leisurely recorded oh little fire over a couple of months last summer, both at Brown's Toronto studio and a few days at Chris Brown's studio in Wolfe Island off Kingston. She also called in Neko Case to sing backup on the only non-original song, Silverado (written by Music Maul's singer Trevor Henderson).

"I've been a fan of Trevor's songwriting for years and years and I thought it would be a good song for Neko and I," said Harmer. "And then a few months later I went on tour with her, I just opened up five or six shows, and I brought along a little laptop and a microphone, and we recorded on the last night of that tour between sound check and show in her hotel room in Rochester. She's got such a beautiful voice, she doesn't need anything too special to make her sound special."

After touring for 2005's I'm a Mountain, Harmer spent the remaining time as an activist to save the Niagara Escarpment in North Burlington from mineral extraction. She also played drums in Music Maul in Kingston for a couple of years, and sang in a barbershop quartet called The Hacapellas.

"I'm a bit of a nerd, I got into it," she said of her move into activism. "And it's really compelling when it's land that I know really well and it's ponds and it's salamanders and it's amazing forests so it takes on a life of its own. And I don't bemoan the fact that I came across it."

She's also just returned from visiting the Queen Charlotte Islands as part of the National Parks Project, which finds filmmakers and contemporary musicians going into 13 national parks and scoring music to 13 short films that will be seen on Discovery Network in spring 2011.

"I was in Haida Gwaii, I didn't know what I was up for and we were on a sailboat for four days, saw humpback whales, saw some amazing totem poles," said Harmer. "It was me and Bryan Webb from Constantines and Jim Guthrie, so it was the three of us, and mostly instrumental but we wrote a song on the spot."

jane.stevenson@sunmedia.ca