Ben Harper's eleventh studio album, Give Till It's Gone, released last Tuesday, May 17.  I am not going to do a step by step review, because I'm not necessarily good at that, and I want you to be surprised the songs.

Overall, I'd get the album 8 out of 10.  It has that classic Ben Harper sound, like the feel of his "Burn To Shine" album.  It has a feel of passion in it that is hard to find in anyone but Harper.

There are the quick tempo, rockin' songs like "Rock and Roll is Free", "Clearly Severely", and the instrumental track of "Get There From Here"- which features Ringo Starr on drums.  

There are also insanely powerful songs, like "Feel Love".  This song would not work with any style but Harper's- the lyrics are great, but it is the passion and desperation in his voice that makes the song cut into you like a knife.

Personally, I feel like the opening track, "Don't Give Up On Me Now" has the same feel to his song with the Relentless 7, "Up To You Now", but is still an awesome song.

This isn't my favorite solo album from him, I think Both Sides of the Gun was a phenomenal album, but this has a different sense than his other solo albums.  It feels like he was accessing something different on this album, and it turned out awesome, just had different inspirations.

I really think you will enjoy the album.  If you are looking for an album that will speak to your soul, this is the album for you.  

And on a side note- there are some unbelievable guitar tones in here.  Harper's band's tones have always had a real dirty tubular sound, but the sounds you will here on this album are amazing.

You can purchase the album: on iTunes ($7.99), Amazon MP3 ($5.99), Amazon Physical Copy ($11.59), or at your local music store.

Unless you are reading this via feedburner, you should be able to tell that the blog has a new design. A facelift, if you will.

I felt like it was time to change it up, give it a more professional look to it.  I really liked the old layout and design, but I felt like the design took away from the content.  I want my content to stand on its own.

This goes for whatever you are creating.  You don't want your movie case to be better than your movie, you don't want the cover of your book to be better than the words written inside.  No one would make it to the actual reason the movie case, book jacket, blog is there!

My wife told me she was sad to see the photo slider gone, that it really gave a good synopsis of who I am.  I thought so to, and I liked it, but again, I felt like it was taking away from the overall blog.  I mean, it took up a good 3/4 of the screen (that and the header).  You were forced to scroll down if you wanted to read a post, and then the theme had a default of shortening the posts so that you had to click on it to read the whole thing.  That is going to make the bounce rate go through the roof!

I don't get my validation from the amount of people who read this blog, or how long they stay on it.  It isn't the reason I blog, but at the same time- it isn't good if people are coming to the site and immediately leaving once they see that they will have to work at reading it.

So I changed the site to something I think will be very user-friendly.  Let me give you a quick tour:
The menu has changed and includes some drop down menus. Fairly self-explanatory.
Links and blogroll has moved to the bottom of the page, and is in three equal sections.
I have included a section of the most popular pages of all time.
That is basically it.  I also changed around the social media buttons.

When you are designing/ creating- do not forget to let the content speak for itself.  I don't fancy myself the best writer, in any category, by a long shot. Same with music, film, and everything else I like to do.  But I have to let it stand for itself.  It robs me and those who experience it when I make the outside something different that the inside.

Always focus on content first, then make sure the design backs it up.  I hope I have done that here.