Watch Ben Harper and Relentless7 Talk New Album "White Lies For Dark Times"

Ben Harper and his new band the Relentless7 drop their blues-rock bomb White Lies for Dark Days on May 5th, so Rock Daily caught up the band when they hit New York's famed Electric Lady Studios for a WFUV performance (read more about the LP in our Spring Album Preview).

Harper tells RS that it was chance — and the H.O.R.D.E. tour — that guided him to his new band — and led to his heaviest album yet. When a runner for the 1998 H.O.R.D.E. tour asked Harper if he would listen to his band's demo, the "Steal My Kisses" singer was amazed by what he heard. He kept in touch with that band's guitarist Jason Mozersky and, after employing R7 for some tracks on 2006's Both Sides of the Gun, the deal was sealed.

"It's a sound I've been looking for and reaching for in my mind," Harper recently told Rolling Stone when we visited him and Relentless7 in the recording studio. "We've taken turns kicking each others' asses in the most gracious fashion, pushing this into new places." Check out the band's video for White Lies' first single "Shimmer and Shine" for a taste of the new places.

"It's absolute, unapologetic rock music," Harper told the Smoking Section. "It's rock music from the places that you want rock to be from. There's some Queen in there, and some Floyd-isms, and there's a good dose of blues and soul." In fact, the influence of James Brown and Otis Redding can be heard over the loud guitars on White Lies for Dark Times, bassist Jesse Ingalls said. For much more on the new album, and many more of the biggest LPs dropping in the coming months, be sure to check out our Spring Music Preview below:

• Spring Music Preview: Inside 45 of the Year's Biggest Albums

• 
  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
• 
  MOVIES 'Star Trek' Is Crazy Good
• 
  TV 10 Shows to Watch This Summer
• 
  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“Tonight's the Night”

The Shirelles | 1960

The lead cut and title track from this girl group's debut album, "Tonight's the Night" was written by 19-year-old bandmember Shirley Owens, who sings lead, and producer Luther Dixon. The band from Passaic, New Jersey met in high school, first calling themselves the Pequellos. The song's frank thoughts about sexual and emotional surrender was racy for the time, but that didn't stop the Chiffons from cutting a similar version immediately after the original came out. "We were the first female group to write some of our own material," band member Beverly Lee recalls. "We did have some say-so in our writing."

More Song Stories entries »

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