Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals - Lifeline
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CD Details
Artist: Ben Harper & the Innocent CriminalsBrand: Baker & Taylor
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2007-08-28
Model: 00094639338528
Music Label: Virgin Records Us
Soundtracks:
- Fight Outta You
- In the Colors
- Fool For a Lonesome Train
- Needed You Tonight
- Having Wings
- Say You Will
- Younger Than Today
- Put It On Me
- Heart Of Matters
- Paris Sunrise #7
- Lifeline
Music reviews of Lifeline
Music Review: Dance with Me to the Colors of the Dusk
Rating: 4 Stars
When we last saw Ben Harper, he dropped a pretty decent double album last album, half filled with funky grooves and the other with mellow tunes, which may have been better off as one single disk. The whole album barely went over an hour so conceivably it could have. Now Harper is back with his Innocent Criminals for a new album, Lifeline, recorded right after coming off his last tour straight to analog tape in a studio in Paris.
My guess it would be hard to be putting out album for fifteen years and only have one hit, yet it never seems to faze Harper who has never tried to recreate the funky Steal My Kisses or its limited success. The latest songs here on Lifeline sound like a mish mash of the two disks of Both Sides of the Gun into a singular not so rock, not so mellow disk. Most of the songs sound like a striped down version of seventies soul classic, very little flashes of horns, instead mostly acoustic guitars and pianos fill out the music.
On Needed You Tonight, Harper goes back and forth effortless from contained shouting to smooth vocals as if he were channeling Otis Redding. But the closest Harper comes to recreating that classic soul sound is on Heart of the Matters (not to be confused with the Don Henley song), a classic slow building song that culminates with the arrival of some backing singers to get across the great chorus and bridge at the end of the song.
Recording right off the road may have contributed to keeping the juices flowing in the Innocent Criminals because they haven't sounded better; they even come close to reaching the climax of the great Stax house band Booker T and the MG's. The groove created by the piano, electric and acoustic guitars for Put it on Me should have your toes tapping until the next time Ben and the boys go back into the studio.
Description of Lifeline
At the end of a nine month European tour, Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals landed in a Paris recording studio and completed their new album, Lifeline, in just seven days. The result: a soulful masterpiece with beautifully direct lyrics, undeniable grooves and an effortless energy that recalls the best works of Otis Redding, Bill Withers and Beggars Banquet-era Rolling Stones. Yeah...it's that good.It's no surprise that most bands today don't record albums live, straight to tape, in one room, no Pro Tools, no auto-tune. There are only a handful of modern artists that can pull it off. Since Ben & The Innocent Criminals were so musically connected after such a long tour, they entered the studio immediately. And on a sixteen track tape machine and one full week in the City of Lights, they successfully recorded and mixed an album that will sit alongside all of your old favorites...just like a classic record should.
Eight albums in just over a dozen years: validation that Ben Harper--mind or body--rarely rests, be it on the road with backing jam band the Innocent Criminals or buried in a studio, where the gifted singer-songwriter lays down his brand of peace-chanting, love-tilting music. His latest is lighter on the rock, with a greater emphasis on gospel, blues, and deeply burning soul. Harper isn't concerned about letting listeners inside that soul, confessing in the title track, "I don't want to wait a lifetime/Yours or mine." The solo acoustic closer is classic wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve, a trait that seems to drift in and out of songs like the ominous ballad "Younger than Today," which remembers earlier days being better days, or its mood-opposite "Say You Will," where the exultance of a flamboyant piano and gospel backing vocals offset cheesy lines such as "love you like a candle loves a flame." The latter is a standout, along with the bluesy opener "Fight Outta You"; the island-splashed "In the Colors," which recalls early-'70s Van Morrison; and "Put It on Me," with its brilliant lyric, "She cuts cherry pie when she looks you in the eye." All eyes, as his legion builds, are on Ben Harper. All ears, too. --Scott Holte
Ben Harper Photos
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More from Ben Harper
 Both Sides of the Gun |  Diamonds on the Inside |  Fight for Your Mind |
 Live at the Hollywood Bowl |  Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama: Live at the Apollo |  Pleasure & Pain |
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