4/5
Father Time.
Ellen Harper showed us her and her son's 'Childhood Home' in 2014 with a family duet album for the record and photo album. Now almost a decade later, it's time for the songs of the father. Ben is back with 'Bloodline Maintenance' this summer. For the first time since he sat down in 2020 and showed us 'Winter Is For Lovers' instrumentally on the lap of his iconic guitar plucking. 'Blood's' amazing album artwork shows a young Ben tugging at the denim-clad arms of his father in a shot so Sly and the Family Stone seventies, all the way down to the sunglasses from the shade of the California cool. It's beautiful. Like the opening call and response in unison of 'Below Sea Level' to stop us from submerging. "Read in the papers/Watch on the news/Planets hangin' on/by the strings of its shoes", the Rolling Stone Italia cover star sings on his first vocal album since there was 'No Mercy In This Land' in 2018 with blue legend Charlie Musselwhite. Getting down on their Grammy winning 'Get Up' sequel. The multiple bands man's (he reunited with The Innocent Criminals in 2016 to 'Call It What It Is') first solo set since 2011's 'Give Till It's Gone', unbelievably over a decade ago. Although we're still waiting on those Relentless7 and Fistful Of Mercy follow-ups. Showing we're not alone, 'The Will To Love' legend fights for our minds once again 'Like A King' with his new protest song in subtle anthem, 'We Need To Talk About It'. And just like Kevin, we really do.
Maintaining the bloodlines. Like the subtle surf protest of his friend and collaborator Jack Johnson's first album in time ('Meet The Moonlight'). Harper will also join Johnson in concert, now he's finished supporting Harry Styles on the One Direction singers album of the year ('Harry's House') tour. Here, he clearly has something to say after the instruments of his 'Lovers' trying to cure the ills of 2020, in black and white. "Slavery/We need to talk about it (We need to talk about it)/I say Black Lives Matter/'Cause history says we don't/You're either a Christian or a racist/You can't be both", he says in statement response to all the police brutality and the wrongful incarceration of black men and women that's existed for centuries in chains. That is not godly, or holy. Why would anyone who burns a cross think it was? This is a protest anthem and spiritual song akin to soulful artist of our generation Leon Bridges' 'Sweeter' with saxophonist Terrace Martin for its subtle beauty, but profound message in the margins like Stevie Wonder's 'Happy Birthday' ode to MLK day. All for a king who blends more genres than Prince as he chases Springsteen and Dylan's great American songbook with the urban legend of his own legacy making lyrics. Classic couplets continue this when Ben asks, 'Where Did We Go Wrong'? "Lost all perspective/Nowhere to take aim/With new marching orders/To find someone else to blame/They stormed the castle/But the king turned out to be a pawn/Where did we go wrong." Anyone that scoffs at the Springsteen or Bobby comparisons to Ben, need see the urgency of lyrics like this for an underground King like Bun B. and the late, great Pimp C.
Father's and son's like Cat Stevens will see more of the growing pains on 'Problem Child'. "My glass is half empty/You hand me a smaller cup/Then you resent me when there's not enough." This is the type of poetic prose Harper has been writing in harmony for a wonder of years. But the child has a problem with a different father...the founding ones. Or at least the ones that neglect some of their sons. All lives can't matter until black ones do too. And that should be on more than a 'Need To Know Basis' as the video for this song dropped on the same day as the LP. Sampling Stevie's 'Superstition' the first record Harper's pops ("probably") played for him. "You're the reason/Aliens would come down to earth/Outer space must look small/From inside your universe/We paint time/With the colors of our lives/With what we do to survive", he laments with the writing on the wall. 'It Ain't No Use' trying to deny this album in a discography discovery of the definitive from early days with Tom Freund, to taking it to church like Hozier with The Blind Boys Of Alabama. It's 'More Than Love' like one of the best tracks on this album. A crazy, amazing ballad for a man with so much depth, he has a greatest hits package. "Like a train in the night/The never-ending fight/For justice deserved/I cry at an epitath/When I'm reading Grapes Of Wrath", reads 'Smile At The Mention'. Whilst 'Honey, Honey' will serve you too as the sweetest thing since Ben stole your kisses with The Neptunes. Out of this world gone 'Donnie' mad comes this timeless classic and you 'Knew This Day Was Comin'' like the times that are a-changin' or a Notorious warning. All the way to the atmospheric, classic closer 'Maybe I Can't'. "Some memories I plant in the garden/Others scattered never to grow/Maybe I can't let go", he says in parting as he let's us. Leaving us with something that will stick in our mind like a lump in our collective, constricted throats. The same day Jack White enters heaven alive for his second album in as many months and the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA AKA, Bobby Digital gives us his second offering of the year, Ben gives us his first since the year that changed us all for the worse in 2020. Musically, he was lost for words then. But now believing in a better way again, he gives us all a voice. Now that's what I call maintenance. On blood. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'We Need To Talk About It', 'More Than Love', 'Maybe I Can't'.
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