BEN HARPER – Bloodline Maintenance – LP – Vinyl

LP – Black Vinyl

Ben Harper releases his eagerly anticipated, fiercely personal soulful album, Bloodline Maintenance, via his new deal with Chrysalis Records. The album was preceded by the single We Need To Talk About It which, propelled by Harpers blisteringly funky guitar, defiantly addresses the wounds of slavery through a sharp-edged call-and-response with gospel backing vocals and pounding rhythms augmented by the distinctive sound of the African talking drum.

The new album is a work largely inspired by the loss of a long-time friend and the lingering influence of a mercurial and charismatic father, Bloodline Maintenance sees Harper performing the majority of the instruments on his own, spanning guitar, bass, drums and an eclectic assortment of percussions including a plastic toy snare. His 17th studio LP and first since 2020s instrumental Winter is the Lovers and the first non-instrumental solo album of new songs since 2016. The new album is further fuelled by Harpers signature lap steel, supercharged through a powerful Dumble amplifier creating a truly unruly tone that Harper describes as a sort of a merging of Robert Johnson and Jimi Hendrix.

Applying the inventiveness of hip-hop to longstanding paradigms of soul, blues and jazz, spinning it all forward into a reconfiguration of a new black Americana, Bloodline Maintenance continues Harpers long history as one of his generations most potent protest singers. Persecuted by local authorities for being a communist, his grandfather moved his family west where their music store, the Folk Music Centre and Museum in Claremont, CA, proved a vital hub in a thriving Southern California folk scene. There Harper learned guitar as a child, playing his first official gig at the age of 12. By the time he was 21, he was touring with blues legend Taj Mahal. The years that followed have seen Harper amass international critical applause and a worldwide fan following, winning three Grammy Awards (out of seven total nominations) for his own genre-traversing body of work while also producing acclaimed albums by Mavis Staples, Rickie Lee Jones, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Natalie Maines, Ziggy Marley, and others. An inveterate collaborator, Harper has also recorded with a diverse span of artists ranging from John Lee Hooker, Charlie Musselwhite, and Jack Johnson to Ringo Starr, Keith Richards and, most recently, Harry Styles, contributing his signature guitar work to the latter superstars chart-topping new album, Harry’s House.

Tracklist:

1. Below Sea Level
2. We Need to Talk About It
3. Where Did We Go Wrong
4. Problem Child
5. Need to Know Basis
6. It Ain’t No Use
7. More Than Love
8. Smile at the Mention
9. Honey, Honey
10. Knew the Day Was Comin’
11. Maybe I Can’t