Review Summary: An interesting recording style, but filled with boring songs everyone has heard done better.
“The record, entitled
Lifeline, was recorded and mixed in 7 days on a 16 track analog tape machine. There were no computers or pro-tools used anywhere in the process.”
- Ben Harper
In a short write-up about
Lifeline on his website, Ben Harper explains how the album was recorded in Paris coming off a nine month tour. With his best equipment and backing band The Innocent Criminals, he sat down to record his 9th studio LP. These recording processes, the ones where an artist or band puts themselves in a different environment and a different style, usually work out well, especially for someone as experienced as Ben Harper. He needs change at this point in his career.
In his write-up, Harper does not lie or make the album sound better than it is. Truthfully, the band sounds great individually and as a group. They sound cohesive and well-rehearsed. On “Fool for a Lonesome Train”, Harper’s voice rises and falls dramatically, and throughout the album he gives a great performance. On “Say You Will”, he gets help from a female vocal choir that sounds excellent. The uptempo, energetic groove of the song brews from The Innocent Criminals, and on every song they give the perfect “backing band” performance. They set down a groove and stay there, letting Harper have center stage most, if not all of the time. In that, Ben Harper has his first problem. He really is not good enough to be featured for an entire album without getting boring. His baritone voice really only gets excited in the energetic songs, of which there are few on the album. The rest of
Lifeline possesses downtempo, bluesy ballads where Harper sings low and hardly tuneful, without any real memorable melodies. Look at the first track, “Fight Outta You.” The punchline is “don’t let them take the fight outta you.” With album titles like Fight For Your Mind, surely this is something Harper strongly believes in, but he sounds so bored on the song, like a sound check for the rest of the album.
Still, this might be forgivable if the sound had some originality to it. On
Lifeline, Harper throws obvious homage to the 60s and 70s where 16-track analogs were in style. Since he used the same equipment, the album perfectly captures the raw, authentic sound of that time period. The songwriting sounds like a carbon copy of that time period, with Harper borrowing from some of the legends of the era. Uptempo songs like “Say You Will” and “Put It On Me” sound like Ray Charles b-sides, while “In the Colors” is distinctly Motown. “Fool for a Lonesome Train” finds Harper trying to imitate Bob Dylan with little success other than the vocal climax. The album closes, then, with nearly 10 minutes of acoustic work, easily the best style on the album. “Paris Sunrise #7” is a fantastic instrumental. The title implies Harper waking up to his last day in Paris, playing to the sun rising. Its spontaneity is a good thing, just a soulful guitar jam. “Lifeline” continues in this manner, with Harper adding vocals to the mix. The acoustic setting works for Harper well, as he reaches the higher end of his voice.
Lifeline proves that, with a band that can play, you don’t need ProTools to make an album sound good. Maybe that is what Harper was trying to prove. The album’s songs came from sound checks while the band was on tour anyway. Still, Harper sounds hardly inspired even in a city like Paris, and his homage to past artists sounds like cheap imitation more than anything.
