Music Review - Lifeline by Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals

Genre - Folk Rock/Acoustic Rock

Songs - 11

Recommended Use - Drive Home From Work

Rating - Good Stuff

“Lifeline” is one of those albums that you listen to the first time and you go… hmm okay, I guess that was pretty good. Then you give it a second listen and you’re like, wait, was that song on there the first time. The album was recorded in about a week in a recording studio in Paris, without the use of computers. Old School y’all. Track 1, “Fight Outta You,” starts you off with Ben doing this monotone voice thing, and if you can make it through the first verse without forwarding he gets into some of his trademark voice inflections. Track 3, “Lonesome Train,” has a great blues sound. Track 6, “Say You Will,” reminds me of some of his earlier stuff, fast paced and fun. Tracks 10 “Paris Sunrise #7,” and 11 “Lifeline,” are blended together to make a great acoustic ballad. Paris is all acoustic with quite a bit of Ben playing slide. The Innocent Criminals stand out once again and are one of the tightest bands I know. They form a great backdrop for Ben’s soft and sad voice to tell the story. I didn’t quite give it a “Sweet!” rating mainly because some of the tracks didn’t have enough kick or hook for me. But all in all it’s a good buy. You really can’t go wrong adding any of their albums to your collection.

As Ben was quoted as saying in the most recent edition of Outside Mag, “The outdoors was always just a huge part of my life. And, you know what, someone’s got to be the soundtrack to all of this. It may as well be me.” Well put…

2 comments September 21st, 2007