Holding on for Dear Life

by Jewly Hight

It’s not every day that a person hears a Ben Harper album that’s almost completely lacking in social commentary or that keeps its musical focus trained in one direction and one direction only. But on both counts, Lifeline is such an album.

Eclectic has gotten to be an extraneous descriptor for Harper, since it’s more or less expected that he’ll assemble blues, reggae, folk and R&B on one disc with a looseness and fluidity that pleases the jam-band crowd. But the 11 songs on his eighth studio album are all in the vicinity of dusky, acoustic soul, and they unfold almost entirely on the level of the personal (gently lurching album opener “Fight Outta You”—a warning about succumbing to the silver-tongued and two-faced—comes the closest to being issue-oriented).

Despite the fact that Harper made the album with his trusty five-piece band—the Innocent Criminals—there’s a lonely wind blowing through many of the tracks, a sense of grasping for solid and familiar things and peeling fingers off of what’s already crumbled. Where, when and how it was recorded doubtlessly had something to do with that. After nine straight months of crisscrossing Europe, the band plopped down in a Parisian recording studio with a partially functional 16-track tape machine and song ideas explored during nightly pre-show soundchecks.

It’s no wonder Lifeline has the sound of emotions rubbed raw. There are cathartic moments—“Needed You Tonight” rages and pleads in 3/4 time, “Say You Will” is propelled by a rubbery groove and Harper’s fiery, syncopated delivery and “Put It On Me” is punchy, gospel-y chugging funk—and heavy sighs—“Having Wings” and “Younger Than Today” are piano-driven and feature some of his more heart-heavy and vulnerable-sounding vocal performances. The songs are sore and loose-jointed, with acoustic guitar, B-3 organ, piano, bass, drums and congas overlapping at the edges, blurred into one far-from-spiritless whole.

Harper even has tapped into that most iconic American image of solitary wandering—the train song. With its thin, forlorn harmonica and familiar imagery (a line such as “Last night is still ringin’ in my head / Like that lonesome whistle” points unmistakably toward Hank Williams “(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle”), “Fool For a Lonesome Train” breaks little new ground, but at least it does justice to the simultaneous pain and relief that comes with distance and space.

Along with isolation and anxiety felt over disintegrating relationships, aging and the passing of time are thematic currents running through the album, perhaps most explicitly during “Younger Than Today” and the title track. After all, these things tend to rise to the foreground of an artist’s consciousness when he’s been a long time on the road.

The album draws to a close with a deep exhale in the form of two quiet solo moments: the bright yet drowsy wonderment of guitar instrumental “Paris Sunrise #7” ebbs seamlessly into the waltz of “Lifeline.” That the guitar—unembellished and alone save Harper’s hushed voice on the final track—sounds like it’s not perfectly in tune, and that his slide is an inexact instrument producing occasional faint wheezes, pings and overtones, only heightens the sense of loneliness.

And as strange as it may seem, worn and weary is a good sound for Harper.

It’s not every day that a person hears a Ben Harper album that’s almost completely lacking in social commentary or that keeps its musical focus trained in one direction and one direction only. But on both counts, Lifeline is such an album.

Eclectic has gotten to be an extraneous descriptor for Harper, since it’s more or less expected that he’ll assemble blues, reggae, folk and R&B on one disc with a looseness and fluidity that pleases the jam-band crowd. But the 11 songs on his eighth studio album are all in the vicinity of dusky, acoustic soul, and they unfold almost entirely on the level of the personal (gently lurching album opener “Fight Outta You”—a warning about succumbing to the silver-tongued and two-faced—comes the closest to being issue-oriented).

Despite the fact that Harper made the album with his trusty five-piece band—the Innocent Criminals—there’s a lonely wind blowing through many of the tracks, a sense of grasping for solid and familiar things and peeling fingers off of what’s already crumbled. Where, when and how it was recorded doubtlessly had something to do with that. After nine straight months of crisscrossing Europe, the band plopped down in a Parisian recording studio with a partially functional 16-track tape machine and song ideas explored during nightly pre-show soundchecks.

It’s no wonder Lifeline has the sound of emotions rubbed raw. There are cathartic moments—“Needed You Tonight” rages and pleads in 3/4 time, “Say You Will” is propelled by a rubbery groove and Harper’s fiery, syncopated delivery and “Put It On Me” is punchy, gospel-y chugging funk—and heavy sighs—“Having Wings” and “Younger Than Today” are piano-driven and feature some of his more heart-heavy and vulnerable-sounding vocal performances. The songs are sore and loose-jointed, with acoustic guitar, B-3 organ, piano, bass, drums and congas overlapping at the edges, blurred into one far-from-spiritless whole.

Harper even has tapped into that most iconic American image of solitary wandering—the train song. With its thin, forlorn harmonica and familiar imagery (a line such as “Last night is still ringin’ in my head / Like that lonesome whistle” points unmistakably toward Hank Williams “(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle”), “Fool For a Lonesome Train” breaks little new ground, but at least it does justice to the simultaneous pain and relief that comes with distance and space.

Along with isolation and anxiety felt over disintegrating relationships, aging and the passing of time are thematic currents running through the album, perhaps most explicitly during “Younger Than Today” and the title track. After all, these things tend to rise to the foreground of an artist’s consciousness when he’s been a long time on the road.

The album draws to a close with a deep exhale in the form of two quiet solo moments: the bright yet drowsy wonderment of guitar instrumental “Paris Sunrise #7” ebbs seamlessly into the waltz of “Lifeline.” That the guitar—unembellished and alone save Harper’s hushed voice on the final track—sounds like it’s not perfectly in tune, and that his slide is an inexact instrument producing occasional faint wheezes, pings and overtones, only heightens the sense of loneliness.

And as strange as it may seem, worn and weary is a good sound for Harper.