Summer is supposed to be the season for lightness and earthly banality, but to counteract that cliché, Ben Harper, Californian who usually chooses the heatwave for his European rounds. Musician bearer of mystical words and practitioner of a musical language developed from the sources of African-American music, he spread his poetry with heart and humanist spirit this Friday at the Porta Ferrada Festival.
Although she has two recent albums, ‘Bloodline maintenance’ (2022) and the recently released ‘Wide open light’, Harper went free in Sant Feliu de Guíxols. She usually does. A piece of modern billing, ‘Below sea level’, opened, yes, the session wrapping the alert for climate change in a heavenly vocal harmony inherited from gospel. From there to the quick rescue of ‘Diamond in the inside’, that song with resonances from Dylan (and The Band) and which honors inner beauty.
a place of peace
The games of voices with soft-rock resonances were a worthy hallmark of these Innocent Criminals, much renewed compared to the old days, now with the guitarist-singer Adrian ‘Alex’ Painter as a leading accomplice. All the pieces fit together and gave shape to that mental place where rock (‘Burn to shine’) meets the echo of reggae (‘Finding our way’) and the ‘funky’ track (‘Mama’s trippin”). Good humor on stage: “My name is Benito& rdquor; , he let it be known, celebrating starring in a “perfect night& rdquor; with “no rain, summertime & rdquor ;.
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This refined troupe gives that profile of musicians for musicians, with their filigrees and that mastery of materials to melt them with a silk glove. But Harper marked territory when he was left alone and caressed our ears with ‘Walk away’ and, placing the ‘lap steel’ on his legs, asked for spiritual help on ‘Giving ghosts’.
From there to a sweet ‘She’s only happy in the sun’ that she dedicated to Spain in memory of certain youthful summers. Theme to which the band proceeded to join gently in the middle of the journey. Transition to other classics from the record catalog, such as ‘Burn one down’ and ‘Say you will’, to seal the night and make it possible for us to leave the Guíxols Arena (1,992 attendees, according to the organization) pondering that perhaps, after all, humanity is not such a lost case as it might sometimes seem.