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 Harper’s 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 2020’s instrumental Winter is the Lovers –and the first non-instrumental solo album of new songs since 2016. The new album is further fuelled by Harper’s 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.”