Genres: Blues, Electric Blues
This album needs time to grow on you but it's worth it. Ben Harper teams up with a mouth organ man named Charlie Musselwhite to tear through some blues and the results are evocative and catchy.
Ben Harper is a roots musician who has dabbled in a huge amount of different styles in his career and has been quite successful at doing it. Here is sticks to one type of music and it sounds much like a jam session in a swampy locale in one of the southern states of the USA. The sound is very clear but it retains the grit of using the mouth organ, Musselwhite's playing really does add a dimension that isn't heard in popular music very often.Harper's singing is tuneful and soulful. The tracks a toe-tapping barn burners.
Some of the songs simmer and some boil. The opener 'Don't Look Twice' halts and aches. 'We Can't End This Way' is a gospel sing-a-long. The songs 'I Don't Believe a Word you Say' and 'Blood Side Out' are much more propulsive and raging. The title track starts off with a funky bassline but is firmly in blues territory by the tag line "don't tell me I can't break the law cause the law has broken me". The song 'She Got Kick' pops along with happiness accepting a girl who is raunchy and tempestuous. The final song 'All that Matters Now' ends with a bit of slow grace. Everything fits together to make the whole thing satisfying.
RATING 4/5
Here is the first song off the album called 'Don't Look Twice'. Check it out.
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