Guitarist Ben Harper is that rare talent able to not only vacation in the worlds of gospel, soul, folk, and even reggae, but also to meld them gracefully together on both album and stage. Yet sometimes you just want him to rock, and, at long last, he’s assembled a new band dedicated to just that. The bare-knuckled “Lay There And Hate Me” is a head-on collision between soul and rock, a grittier, angrier side of Harper that shines through the Relentless7’s first disc together, “White Lies For Dark Times”.
by Mark Emge
