I have been working a system of classifications for song lyrics, and therefore lyricists, over in my mind for some time now. Every time I hear a particularly egregious example of one of my proposed groups, I think to myself that I should assign them formal names and put them down on paper. The notion has been simmering for quite some time, and I fear that Ben Harper's newest CD, White Lies for Dark Times, with his new band, Relentless7, has pushed me over the edge. There are, you see, five types, five levels of lyricists in the rock world, much like there are levels of hell in Dante's Inferno. Except that in this case, not all of the levels are actually negative. Just most of them. Anyway, from worst to best, they are:

The Incoherent - They simply string words together with no real attempt at meaning or coherence, even on the sentence level. Sometimes they can sound pretty, but you won't find any meaning in these songs, anymore than you will in a jar of toothpicks spilled on the floor. Phish and Red Hot Chili Peppers, I am looking at you. Example: "Zipping through the forest with the curdling fleas / To grow with them spindles, the mutant I seize."

The Not Cohesive - They string sentences together like The Incoherent string words together. There is a semblance of meaning within any given sentence by itself, but when you look at the song as a whole, it starts to fall apart. There is, at best, a mood that unifies the disjointed sentences, but that's mostly due to the music. Pull the lyrics out by themselves, and they'll seem a whole lot less meaningful. Embarrassing, even. If you can't tell anyone what the song is about without a lot of hand-waving and use of the words "well" and "kind of", it's probably this. Early, and perhaps all A Silver Mt. Zion, We Were Promised Jetpacks, and, most notably as pertains to this review, Ben Harper. Examples are hard here without the entire song, but: "It's thunder and it's lightning and it's all things too frightening / I could barely see outside. / Your body was black and blue / It struck twice, there's nothing new."

The Trite - This is the lowest level of coherence, and makes up the bulk of popular music. Your standard, done-to-death love song, songs about rocking, songs about partying, songs about fucking, and virtually anything containing the phrase "without you," with bonus points for drawing the notes out on any of those three syllables. Stereotypical rock, stereotypical pop, stereotypical anything. I could list most of the rock and pop world here. AC/DC? Kiss? 311? Why even bother trotting out the lyrics? You know them if you've ever listened to the radio.

The Respectable - This is the lowest level of bands that actually write good lyrics. Lyrics that are original, and interesting, and at the very least look at old subjects in a slightly new, or perhaps just better-worded, way. This is where the lyrics can actually make a song, and can actually make you feel something by themselves. They look good written out on paper, and can stand alone. Quality, but not brilliance. The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens, Rage Against the Machine, and most of the music that I listen to and love, really. "We are two mariners, our ships' sole survivors, in this belly of a whale / Its ribs our ceiling beams, its guts our carpeting, I guess we have some time to kill."

The Sublime - Lyrics that make you want to enthusiastically shake hands with the author and thank him for his brilliance as a single tear rolls down your cheek. Lyrics that could be incredibly moving without the benefit of music. Lyrics that are as moving as, or more moving than, the songs they are in. Incredible turns of phrase, avoidance of the obvious rhymes, true insight, beautiful analogies. Lyrics that make you replay the song so that you can hear them again, and when you do, that make you say "that guy is an incredible lyricist" or "make sure you listen to the lyrics" when discussing the band with your friends. Tool, Death Cab For Cutie, Okkervil River. "Cause now we say goodnight from our own separate sides / Like brothers on a hotel bed."

Virtually no bands fall strictly into one category; they tend to fluctuate from song to song. Most bands do, however, land in one far more often than any other, as mentioned above. Tom Waits is always either Respectable of Sublime. Mark Kozelek was Trite in his early days, but has since moved onto being Respectable, with moments of absolute Sublimity. Led Zeppelin tends to fall all over the map, with plenty of Trite, a good deal of Respectable, and perhaps the most famous Not Cohesive song of all time. A Silver Mt. Zion is a strange case of being both Respectable and Not Cohesive at the same time. I love the lyrics to God Bless Our Dead Marines, but if you asked me what it was about, I'd start by saying, "Well, ah, it's kind of..." and then wave my hands a bit. I actually found the spoken word that opens Built Then Burn incredibly moving and poetic. So poetic, in fact, that I wrote it out - at which point I realized that it actually sounded pretty stupid without the support of the fantastic music, and was really Not Cohesive at all.


But all of this brings me back around to Ben Harper. I put his new CD, White Lies for Dark Times, in the CD player in my car, and as I listened to it, I thought, hey, this is pretty good! This is probably the best album he's done in years! He's sort of done the reverse of what most musicians and bands go through. He had a huge band that included piano and organ and extra percussion and sometimes strings and on and on, and on this album, he stripped it back to bass, drums, and two guitars. Where he once made music that hopped from genre to genre, dabbling in rock, blues, folk, funk, gospel, and more, White Lies for Dark Times is a rock album. Plain, simple, and straightforward. And I thought to myself that it had served him well, this return to roots, his guitar solos a reminder that he isn't just a singer / songwriter who strums an acoustic, but a man who can play a pretty fucking mean slide guitar solo. This is one of the best albums he's done in years, I thought.

And then, as I listened to what is easily my favorite song on the album, Up to You Now, my opinion started to sway in the other direction. I remembered that his most recent albums were Lifeline, Both Sides of the Gun, and There Will be a Light, which didn't make much an impact on me, despite there being a solid four CDs of music between them. I realized that the music, while it did rock, was perhaps too straightforward. It'd be fun to see this band in a bar, but as a release from someone who has a long career behind him? And then I began to listen to the lyrics, to really pay attention to them, and I actually started getting a little angry at Ben Harper. The sort of anger that comes from knowing that there is unrealized potential, that the man can do better, that this is good, but it could be great. And the lyrics, ultimately, are what really grate on me when I listen to White Lies.

Ben Harper has, over his career, largely fallen into being Not Cohesive, Trite, or Respectable. He's had nine albums at this point, so there has been plenty of time for him to change, but by and large, I'd put him in the Trite level. Trite, with bouts of being Not Cohesive, moments of being Respectable, and one or two bits of Sublimity. Take, for example, one of my favorite songs of his, Blessed to be a Witness, an uplifting requiem that's as much a celebration of life as a lamentation of death: "Some have flown away and can't be with us here today / Like the hills of my home, some have crumbled, and now are gone / Gather 'round for today won't come again, won't come again." Beautiful - though I must admit that even within that song, he is Not quite Cohesive. The sentences all capture the mood, but some don't quite make sense to me.

It's a long way between that and White Lies. On this album it feels as if Harper is tossing off lyrics as he might toss off a guitar solo in concert. He always goes for the easy rhyme, to the point that you can both tell what he's going to sing before he sings it, and the songs end up being Not at all Cohesive. Play along with me: "The arms that hold you close are the arms that hold you back / When your world..." What comes next? Can you tell? I bet you can: "is under attack." Those lines are preceded with "I have to hide from my own face / Now that we have fallen from grace." What does that even mean? What does it have to do with arms holding you close and back, or your world being under attack? "There's no sound louder than war / And we don't have tomorrow anymore / You wrote a list with all your demands / And you nailed it to both of my hands." What? What the fuck? What the fuck? What does that mean? What does any sentence in that song have to do with any other sentence? What the shit is the song about? Anything? Anything?

I cannot help but feel like Ben Harper is putting minimal effort into his lyrics. That he's simply throwing out whatever rhymes, and whatever seems to vaguely fit the mood of the song, as created by the music. Sure, the music Harper and his new band have recorded is good blues-tinged rock, and yes, there are some good grooves and some ripping guitar solos. But I still come away feeling like White Lies is a loose jam session or a raw bar gig put to record - and I don't mean that in a good way.