Ben Harper's going great guns

Ben Harper splits his moods over two discs.

Ben Harper feels like a piece of meat. You're forced to parade yourself out in front of public opinion like this," he says of the three-week publicity jaunt for his new album.

"And you know what? There's been some music I didn't understand at first, and I didn't give it enough of a chance, and a year later I went back and heard it and felt like an idiot because it was incredible and I had pooh-poohed it for a year."

If that's a warning to his critics, it's not necessary. Both Sides of the Gun is his best work in years and even the reticent Rolling Stone lavished it with four stars. It's Harper's first solo release in three years and follows last year's Grammy-winning gospel album with the Blind Boys of Alabama. It's a double disc that scours his rock, gospel and R&B roots with more focus than his previous work.

Harper's other albums have fused his diverse styles, but here he has split them into two moods.

The first is an intimate portrait of his personal life, a romantic, ballad-like approach set to symphonic strings.

The second is a raw, blues-rock affair that reveals his socially conscious public persona. Among the highlights, he scream-sings a motivational mantra on Better Way, damns the handling of Hurricane Katrina on Black Rain and sings of his devil on his shoulder on the Stones-influenced Engraved Invitation.

At less than an hour of music, the songs would have fitted on one record, which is why Harper wasn't concerned he would come across as an indulgent. "That's the pitfall of double records - the potential to be the rambling artist. But this was incomplete to me with just the one. I sequenced it countless times and it just didn't fit together.

"It was time to take a different move for the clarity of the music. I'd already pushed the limits of musical diversity on one body of work - if not to the limit, certainly far and beyond whatever I thought I could. But on this record I had to break my own mould and take a completely different route."

Since 1999's Burn To Shine album, Harper has worked with his band the Innocent Criminals. This time, inspired by his turn with the Blind Boys, he recruited notable members of the Los Angeles jazz scene and they can be heard on the smoky The Way You Found Me.

"You can't be around guys like that with seven decades of musical and spiritual history and culture without having it rub off on you somehow."

Harper also produces, and he plays many of the instruments - guitar, drums, piano, vibes, Weissenborn guitar, bass, percussion - a process that brought back childhood memories. He first experimented with exotic sounds when his grandfather ran the Folk Music Centre and Museum just outside LA.

"There was plenty of me going from instrument to instrument, when I was a kid. I've never strayed away from expressing different styles on one record because that's just how I write music. Definitely that was inspired by my parents and grandparents embracing different music from all over the world."

Harper now finds himself at a professional and emotional crossroads. He is immensely proud of his finished product. He has also severed ties with it, preferring not to listen to his own stuff once it has come out - partly because he spends so much time playing the songs on the road. "The music doesn't belong to me any more. I make it and put it out there and know that once I've done it I don't have anything left in the tank and that I couldn't have done any better on any one single note on the record."

This might seem arrogant - and Harper is known for his sometimes esoteric ideas about his songs - but listen to them and it seems he may be the misunderstood musician he makes out.

"Fools will be fools and wise will be wise," he laments on Better Way, "but I will look this world straight in the eyes."

So it angers him that he was misquoted about a personal song. Harper was said to have proclaimed that Happily Ever After in Your Eyes was the "ultimate wedding song".

"Oh, don't read articles when you interview me," he erupts. "Listen to the music. Because I never said that. Never."

Last year, Harper married actress Laura Dern, and the song was part of the performance by a string quartet. He would never sing at his own wedding, he says, joking that he could hardly step in during the proceedings and announce he was about to perform. But the song was a part of the ceremony.

If there are other songs about Dern, he's not about to give them away - he gives so much of himself in his music, he says, and it's his way of drawing a line.

He dismisses questions he considers irrelevant, refusing to answer them or giving abrupt replies.

So it's odd that he talks about his marriage openly: "Well you definitely feel it in a deeper way, which I didn't think possible after so many years.

"I figured, okay, this is something we should definitely do but, I mean, it's been six years. We've been through a lot so it seems as though it should be a natural progression. But once you make that move there's something that comes into you and moves through you that's different."

Touring has always been a family affair and more so now. He has two children with Dern - 4-year-old son Ellery and 1-year-old daughter Jaya - and there are two children from a previous marriage, son Charles and daughter Harris.

If Harper makes it to New Zealand in the next two months he hopes to bring the family. He also plans to record another album. "Right now I like the pace of things. I like making records at a faster pace. It keeps up with my head, my creative process."