[6] Carlton began recording the album in June 2003 at Morningwood Studios (owned by Jenkins) in San Francisco, before moving to filmmaker George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California.
[8] Before recording began, Carlton and Jenkins conducted a series of "A-B-ing" tests to compare analog tape with Pro Tools (digital).
Third Eye Blind guitarists Tony Fredianelli ("San Francisco") and Arion Salazar also appear, as does former Red Hot Chili Peppers member Jesse Tobias.
[19] An October 2003 article in Rolling Stone magazine reported that "Private Radio" would likely be the album's lead single, and "San Francisco" the only love song.
[8] "White Houses" describes a young woman coming of age and finding romance, and eventually losing her virginity; "I wanted to write a song that everyone could relate to, about situations that everyone faces.
[11][25] The album shares its name with a keyboard instrument, the harmonium, but Carlton said she adopted the word and made her own definition for it; she intended it as a portmanteau of the words harmony and pandemonium to define the approach to the recording of the album, which she described as "kind of an organized, chaotic approach where I wanted to maintain and preserve that wild abandon to creating.
Slant Magazine stated, "From the rollicking piano arpeggios to the classically-influenced melodies, it's impossible not to invoke Tori Amos when discussing Carlton's songwriting, particularly in the last stretch of the album.
And where Amos loses herself in abstract loopiness, Carlton often gets caught up in pretty but ambiguous metaphors (see the dreamlike imagery of unicorns and vampires in "Half A Week Before The Winter" and the "dandelions blowing in the wind" of the orchestral "She Floats").
But it just so happens that these are some of the most musically interesting songs on the album, the latter climaxing with a spectacular choir of voices and screams that wouldn't sound out of place on Björk's Medúlla.
"[31] Elysa Gardner of USA Today also praised the album, commenting, "Carlton's second CD is that rare coming-of-age project that feels neither corny nor calculated.
Enlisting Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins as producer and sometime co-writer, the 24-year-old unveils songs that seem sharper and more intimate than those on her debut, yet still retain sweetness.
The single, 'White Houses', and 'Who's to Say' capture the dewy wonder and confusion of young love, while 'Private Radio' and 'Half a Week Before the Winter' reject navel-gazing in favor of a crisply moody intensity.
Steven Erlewine from Allmusic also gave the album a good review, stating "Carlton's songs often read like diary entries, dealing with familiar adolescent themes as love and longing, and they sound even smaller when delivered in her thin but appealing girlish voice, but they gain stature when married to their cinematic arrangements, driven by her insistent, circular piano and dressed by light layers of strings, guitars, and vocal overdubs.
Carlton seems to equate seriousness with a lack of hooks, either in the music or the production, so there's nothing as immediate or memorable as 'A Thousand Miles', which means there's nothing to lead a listener into the world she sketches on the album—only those already won over by the entirety of her debut will have the patience to dig deeply into this insular album.
'Annie', a song about a fan dying of an unnamed disease, even reaches ecstatic moments via its energetic backing track of Carlton's Glassian circular piano loops and verses that reveals that, yes, indeed Stephen Jenkins (Third Eye Blind, boyfriend) is the co-producer of this record.
Explaining Carlton's "predictable plunge" with Harmonium, the New York Daily News indicated the release date was partially responsible for the album's underperformance, and emphasized the low radio play for "White Houses": "Every holiday season, some acts wind up with nothing but a lump of coal... more importantly, radio found no hits on Carlton's sophomore CD".
[37] Slant magazine, also attributing the album's low sales to the failure of "White Houses", alleged a lack of promotion by A&M Records: "Whether ["White Houses"] wasn't promoted adequately or audiences just didn't connect with the more mature, narrative style of the song, the label decided to let the album languish on store shelves with little support".
Chris Richards, a Borders music buyer, said that a follow-up record from an artist who had a "huge" hit debut single was a "challenge", but that the album "retains the same qualities of the first.
[30] MTV News wrote that because she was no longer grouped with fellow young female singer-songwriter-instrumentalists Avril Lavigne and Michelle Branch, Carlton had a challenge "to balance her artistic credibility with a fanbase built upon TRL appeal.
[41] In early October, Carlton opened for alternative rock band The Calling on their short tour of Brazil,[42] and a performance she recorded for Sessions@AOL was aired over the Internet.
[44] To support the album, Carlton embarked on a North American concert tour, which began on October 21 in Minneapolis, Minnesota and concluded on November 21 in Portland, Oregon;[43] her opening act was pop rock band Low Millions.
Carlton was quoted in a March 2005 interview with Fly Magazine as saying it was "difficult" for someone like her, a singer-songwriter who played the piano, to "reach a lot of people", but that "depending on what happens with the second single, I think it will do really well.
"[47] A second tour, with Cary Brothers and Ari Hest as support acts for many of the shows, ran from March 9 (in Atlanta, Georgia) to April 30 (in Plattsburgh, New York).
[48] In April and May 2005, songs from Harmonium were featured on the WB teen soap operas Charmed and One Tree Hill,[49] and Carlton participated in an exclusive performance with Ryan Cabrera.
Nicks said she was glad to give Carlton the opportunity to perform in front of a large, caring and loving audience, particularly because the poor state of the music industry meant that artists such as her weren't "nurtured ...
[52] Carlton said she was suffering from the lack of promotion the label gave to the album because of her non-conformist attitude, but that she felt she made the right decision with regards to gaining press attention and credibility that she wanted to maintain throughout her career so she could attract loyal fans.
During her studio time, in which she wrote songs with Linda Perry and The Matrix,[54][55] she had what she called a "revelation" about leaving the label to find another record deal.
[28] In May, Carlton wrote to her fans on her official website that because "shortsighted (nonmusical bastards)" at the label did not believe the album would sell well if given promotion, there would be no second single released in the US.
"[I] worked my ass off promoting Harmonium in the ways that [I] could control, but you can't sell records to someone in the middle of Indiana without a little help," she wrote.
"[57] The Herald & Review said that Carlton "[became] another one of the new millennium's poster children for what happens when music labels are taken over by accountants and artist development is abandoned.