Being in a job for 28 years changes a man. It often pushes you to return to simpler, calmer things. In Ben Harper’s case, it’s been ten years since he explored his folk and blues roots. It’d be difficult to make Winter Is For Lovers any more unpretentious. The singer no longer sings. He plays guitar. We only hear his lap-steel guitar and it takes us all around the world, as the tracks’ titles suggest.
A song, a place, an idea. Ben Harper creates an atmosphere that he develops, repeats and varies without ever losing its core essence. Each song does just that. There are those that play with silences, like The Joshua Tree or Lebanon and those that give way to arpeggios and bigger chords, like Inland Empire and London. They all have one thing in common: that simple, intimate sound that focuses your attention solely on the instrument and Ben Harper’s hands. You hear the sound of the bottleneck on the strings and all the perfect inaccuracies... Between Americana à la Ry Cooder and tributes to the genre’s pioneers such as Leo Kottke, Winter Is For Lovers brings us incredibly close to the artist while at the same time managing to propel us towards other spheres. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz