Get Up!
Stax/Decca Records (40 mins)
Guitarist Ben Harper and blues harp player Charlie Musselwhite are no strangers to each other’s music. They first met when they recorded the track ‘Burnin’ Hell’ with the great John Lee Hooker, and they’ve since worked together on two albums: Harper’s Both Sides of the Gun and Musselwhite’s Sanctuary. This is the first time they’re recorded a whole album together, though, and the result is somewhat of an album of two halves.
It starts promisingly with the track ‘Don’t Look Twice’, essentially an acoustic blues duet between the two with occasional crashes from the drums and bass. This piece contains some great blues couplets, such as “You know it’s bad when your ceiling says to the floor, I’ll trade you places I can’t take it up here no more”. Harper takes vocal duties throughout the album and in this track he shows off a fragile, high-pitched tone which suits it to the ground. Unfortunately, for the first half of the album, the opener is the only one that really stands out. Of the next four tracks, there’s a pretty average ‘Mannish Boy’-esque talking blues; a waltzy, gospel-inspired piece; a passable bit of blues rock; and a laid back soul offering. None of these are offensive, as such – they’re all good songs individually – but the frequent genre-shifting leaves this set of tracks feeling a bit stilted.
Persistence is well-rewarded though, because from the brooding sixth track, ‘I Ride at Dawn’ (the only track on the album on which Musselwhite doesn’t feature), the album takes a turn for the much better. Although there’s some alternation of genre here (there’s another blues rock and a New Orleans-style boogie) this set of tracks seems to gel much better than the first lot, leading to a really enjoyable listen. It’s here that some of the best individual tracks lay too.
‘I Ride at Dawn’ is a spooky anti-war song, sung as by a soldier marching to his death. Some great slide guitar from Harper emphasises the dark texture of the bass and drums and really makes this track great. Probably the best track on the album, however, is its last. ‘All That Matters Now’ is a slow blues which really takes its time – all of the parts on this track (vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano and bass) are all to some extent understated and it’s a great way to end the album on a mellow note.
It’s a shame that the peak reached during the second half of the album couldn’t have come a little earlier on, and even as little as a rearrangement of the tracks could have made this good album into a great one. As it is, be prepared and persevere through the first few tracks to get to the best bits and enjoy it for what it is – a good, if slightly stilted, blues album from two generations of the genre’s masters.