Both Sides of the Gun [Special Edition] (CD - 2006)

Personnel: Ben Harper (vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar, slide guitar, piano, vibraphone, drums, percussion); Ben Harper; Michael Ward (guitar, 12-string guitar, bass guitar, background vocals); Jason Mozersky, Danny Kalb, Marc Ford (guitar); Jan Ghazi (electric guitar, background vocals); David Lindley (tamboura); Joel Pargman, Alyssa Park, Patrick Rosalez (violin); Brett Banduci (viola); Timothy Loo (cello); Greg Kurstin (piano); David Palmer (keyboards); Juan Nelson (bass guitar); Oliver Francis Charles (drums, background vocals); Jordan Richardson, Jose Medeles, J.P. Plunier (drums); Michelle Griepentrog, Sue Chase, Nick Sandro, Jennifer Ohrstrom, Natasha Cockrell, Scott Thomas, Charlie Musselwhite (background vocals); Jason Yates (keyboards, background vocals); Leon Mobley (percussion, background vocals).

Audio Mixer: Danny Kalb.

Recording information: The Boat Studios, Silverlake, CA.

Photographer: Michael Halsband.

With the two-disc BOTH SIDES OF THE GUN, singer/songwriter Ben Harper appears hell-bent to play havoc with listeners' expectations. For those who thought blues-rock was a relic of the 1970s, abandoned to rot amid worn-out Foghat riffs, Harper presents a compelling argument to the contrary on the set's first disc. Instead of jacking up traditional blues forms in a clichéd way, though, Harper applies a blues sensibility to the rock vocabulary, coming up with something that feels new in the process. The emotive howl of his vocals and the from-the-gut moans of his guitar bespeak a musician schooled in Zeppelin and Hendrix but ultimately closer to Jeff Buckley at his most frenetic. The raw, gritty production lends an appropriately in-your-face quality as well.

The second disc further messes with one's preconceptions. It's a quiet, acoustic-oriented affair wherein Harper seems to channel vintage Cat Stevens. In fact, there are spots where his singing sounds eerily similar to that of the British folk-rocker. Where the first disc's songs feel full of anger and social consciousness, the vulnerable ballads occupying the second are largely wistful and romantic, operating on a more personal scale. As different as they are, BOTH SIDES OF THE GUN are just as formidable in Harper's hands.

After seven albums and 12 years in the game, it can stop being said that Ben Harper is hard to categorize, because at this point, the fact that he always incorporates diverse elements -- from folk to hard rock to funk -- into his music and makes something very much his own is a given. He's practically created a genre. So maybe that's why it's so surprising that Both Sides of the Gun, a two-disc album, has little of that very thing that makes him so unique. Instead, he chooses to show off the range of his musical interests, and ends up with something closer to a compilation than a Ben Harper album. The softer, acoustically based disc is full of pretty love songs and sweetly strummed guitars, and though Harper has done this before and kept his own style intact (in "Two Hands of a Prayer" and "When She Believes," for example), here he comes off sounding a bit boring. He hasn't forgotten himself completely: both "Never Leave Lonely Alone" and "Crying Won't Help You Now" are good songs, sounding strongly of him while also experimenting with other styles (Latin/French and gospel, respectively), but almost all the other tracks could have been pulled off any run-of-the-mill singer/songwriter album from the past ten years. Things improve slightly on the other, louder, disc ("Please Don't Talk About Murder While I'm Eating" is all electric blues, complete with a distorted slide guitar solo, and "Serve Your Soul" is the most Harper-ish of everything, blending folk guitar, pure rock, raw blues, and socially conscious lyrics into one eight-minute masterpiece), but there's still that sampler-record feeling there. "Engraved Invitation" and "Get It Like You Like It" are heavily influenced by the Rolling Stones, "Both Sides of the Gun" alludes to Curtis Mayfield and James Brown, and "Better Way" is practically a tribute (at least musically) to Prince's "7." Harper has always borrowed from other artists, but he's also always added enough of himself to make it not quite so...blatant. It's not that he isn't able to perform such a diverse selection: there are plenty of excellent cuts and most of the album is quite good. Harper is a fantastically talented musician, and he has really developed his voice since Diamonds on the Inside and is unafraid to do things with it, going from a croon to a scream and always sounding great. But why he's copying other people's styles instead of building on his own is both odd and disappointing, because he's always been able to experiment before while also preserving his individuality. If in Both Sides of the Gun Harper is trying to show his audience what a wide variety of music he can cover, he certainly accomplishes that. But if he's trying to create an album that is really about him, he doesn't quite deliver. Ben Harper is in there, don't worry, but he can be a little hard to find. [The special edition includes a sticker, the scores for "Morning Yearning" and "Better Way," and a six-song bonus disc. The music is a nice addition: the alternate versions of "Reason to Mourn" and "Morning Yearning" throw out the strings tracks from the originals, leaving a simple background that is perfect for an especially soulful Harper. "Get It Like You Like It," recorded live in Nashville on August 2, 2005, is good, too, though strangely Harper sounds more like Boz Scaggs than Mick Jagger, while "Beloved One," recorded one day before in Atlanta, is practically identical to the version found on Burn to Shine.] ~ Marisa Brown minimize