Deep Purple – Bananas – 2003
Bye bye, Jon Lord.
So, Lord leaves, Blackmore is gone, who’s left? Ian Gillan (who occasionally sounds like Ian Anderson AND Warren Zevon!), drummer Ian Paice. Not much else.
Ex-Sabbath keyboardist Don Airey is here instead and Steve Morse is on guitars.
You know what? It’s great. They sound fantastic. You wouldn’t know the difference. Well, they are more of a jam band than a metal band, but I’m at the point now where I think Purple accidentally invented metal. I think they just played what they wanted. Blackmore liked harder stuff and he caused the metallic part of the band. Lord and then Airey fit right in the psychedelic trope. Gillan is just a good vocalist, through and through.
This album isn’t as hard as Abandon. It’s lighter. Funnier at times. More fun at others. Sometimes it rocks (“House of Pain”, “Silver Tongue”), sometimes it’s heartbreaking (“Haunted”, “Walk On”), or it’s playful as on the folky-Simon and Garfunkel-esque, “Never a Word”. There isn’t a clunker in the bunch, with the high point being the multi-structured, sublimely layered, “I’ve Got Your Number”.
The 1-2 punch toward the end of “Bananas” and “Doing it Tonight”, one a pure rocker and the other tinged with Reggae, is the most inspired the band has sounded in a while.
I love Bananas. I’m bananas for Bananas
Grade: A
ASide: House of Pain, Haunted, I’ve Got Your Number, Bananas, Doing it Tonight
BlindSide: Silver Tongue, Walk On
