Stream: Ben & Ellen Harper, ‘A House Is a Home’

Kevin Bronson on May 9th, 2014

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Mother’s Day is Sunday, so we would be remiss (if not severely upbraided) if we did not tout the new album “Childhood Home” (out this week). It’s the work of Ben & Ellen Harper – yes, the son in collaboration with the mother – and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more familial album of folk music on the planet. Six of the songs are penned by Ben and four by Ellen, whose parents founded the Folk Music Center and Museum in Claremont that became the laboratory for Ben’s musical upbringing. Far from a gimmick release, “Childhood Home” is full of finely honed acoustic music, sweet harmonies and deftly articulated themes – in fact, the 44-year-old songwriter told Radio.com in an interview, the dialogue with his mother “pushed me to places I’d never gone lyrically. And to be able to say that at my age, doing what I do for this long, is quite an arrival.”

||| Stream: “A House Is a Home”