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Rating: In 2018, can one still compose rock music that stands up to the great past? Evidently, yes.
Here, the protagonist is the blues, but also rock, perfectly mixed into a "modern electric blues" unicum, as the musicians, the good ones, would say.
Protagonists: a "young" musician (now a veteran of artistic involvement, considering that his recording debut dates back to 1992), Ben Harper, and an experienced old harmonica player, always within the blues circle, Charlie Musselwhite; a black Californian and a white from Mississippi, even geographically, a perfect union of Blues and Rock.
Ben Harper, it must be acknowledged, has always composed albums of great frankness: never overproduced, always in "direct capture," playing the instruments without embellishments (often him alone playing everything) and mixing them in a "homemade" way. This album is no exception to his artistic rule.
The presence of Charlie Musselwhite is limited (so to speak) to his harmonica, present in all the tracks, accompanying Harper's hoarse but always very intense voice, as if it were a "second" voice: that's why the "duo" works so well, because neither of the two elements plays "the protagonist," but Harper’s voice and Musselwhite’s harmonica become protagonists together.
When I Go and Bad Habits are two great examples of the magnificence of the purest rock-blues; the first is played and sung à la Stones, it almost seems to come from their recent Blue & Lonesome, an extraordinary album of Stones blues covers (however, Harper’s are not covers, but original pieces!); the second is a Dylan-style blues, with the classic guitar-harmonica riff separating the verses, it seems to come from the Highway 61 Revisited sessions.
The Bottle Wins Again (Blues) and Movin' On are Muddy Waters-style pieces, blues with a hard rock touch, enriched by beautiful electric guitar solos from Harper.
When Love Is Not Enough and Nothing At All are the masterpieces of the album, pieces, in my opinion, among the most beautiful ever written in the genre, which in this case is a soul-blues that takes you far back, up to Ray Charles; closing your eyes, it almost feels like hearing Charles, not only for the piano sound, here played by Jesse Ingalls and Ben himself, but also for Harper's voice, in this case very close to the nostalgic singing, typical of papa Ray.
No Mercy In This Land, the title track, is the only piece sung by Musselwhite: an excellent country-blues piece, all played with slide guitar and harmonica. This too is a miracle, a piece that has nothing to envy to the masterpieces of the genre written over fifty years ago: that in 2018, an era of disposable music, digitally unplayed, one can write a stark masterpiece, but full of "soul," like this, is a true miracle.
This is a timeless album, a small jewel, to be kept jealously, listened to with respect, as when approaching some ancient artifact, returned by chance from the earth.
If in 2018, one can still present "new" things and not covers of this level, then music still has a future and something to say.
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