Ben Harper & Relentless7 – White Lies for Dark Times

I think the most common first response from most Ben Harper fans when they heard that he was putting an album out with a new band was “What happened to the Innocent Criminals? We loved them!” After everyone calmed down and realized that this was just a temporary excursion, a chance for artists to collaborate in a new environment, the concern turned to excitement for something unexpected and new.

Relentless7 has a very interesting back story, one that gives hope for every aspiring musician waiting for that one lucky break. While touring with the Horde festival in the late ’90s, Harper was being shuttled to a venue in Texas. The driver was a singer in a local band in which the guitar player was Jason Mozersky, now a member of Relentless7. The driver persuaded Harper to listen to his band’s demo tape as they were driving, and, once the tape started playing, he was blown away by what he was hearing. This planted a seed of friendship between Harper and the members of the band, especially Mozersky. Years later in 2005 Harper asked Mozersky to add some guitar tracks to his then current project, Both Sides of the Gun. Mozersky agreed and surprisingly showed up the next day with his friends, drummer Jordan Richardson and bassist Jesse Ingalls. They would lay down the track “Serve your Soul” for the album. This created the connection between Harper and the band that now has birthed their own project White Lies for Dark Times.

Right from the start of the album you can see where the Relentless7 project starts to differ from Harper’s previous work. The opening track “Number with No Name” is saturated with delta blues slide guitar, and has a purposefully stripped down mix that is a little less polished and grittier than what you would normally find on a Harper album.

Harper has always stuck close to a message of self-empowerment and has brought this message to many of his songs, most recently “Fight Out of You” and “Better Way.” This theme made its way on to this album in the form of “Up to You Now.” However the song seems to have traded in some of its powerful message for power chords and does not quite reach its predecessors.

The point in the album where it became black and white in how Relentless7 differs sonically than the Innocent Criminals was on “Why Must You Always Dress in Black.” Originally from Harper’s album Both Sides of the Gun, the overall structure of the song did not change, but it still manages to sound new and fresh. This is accomplished primarily by the rhythm section, with drums and bass give this song a bluesy Texas shuffle that is the underlying groove in a lot of the tunes present here. It is the sound that Harper was searching for and was so eager to pair with his slide guitar playing, which is utilized more than usual on this album.

The creative energy that comes from trying a fresh and new sound was enough to produce several songs on this album that are worth holding onto, songs with a hard-hitting rock n’ roll backbone and fuzzed out guitars. But the energy from these songs seemed to have dried up on other songs, ending up as merely decent. Hold onto the album for a listen here and there, but keep your eyes on their tour page because the new band and material would be an adrenaline pumping experience in any small venue or club.

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