Label: earMUSIC
Release date: July 19, 2024
Production: Bob Ezrin
Album length: 52.19 min
Genre: Hard Rock
Rating: 8.5/10
Deep Purple, the indestructible hard rock legends, just won’t quit. Unlike their equally notorious and influential peers Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, they’re still going more than fifty-five years after forming, and with the album “=1” they’ve kicked off a new chapter in their long and turbulent career. In 2022, cult guitar virtuoso Steve Morse left the band because of his wife’s illness. That marked the end of the longest-lived lineup in Deep Purple history, since the members of that incarnation stuck together for a full twenty years. His return was originally on the cards, but sadly his wife’s health took a turn for the worse, and saying goodbye to his longtime musical comrades became unavoidable.
Morse was replaced by Northern Irish guitar maestro (and occasional singer) Simon McBride, who started his professional music career at just sixteen as a member of relatively obscure metallers Sweeet Savage before making a name for himself as a respected session player. His stint in the solo band of longtime Deep Purple keyboardist Don Airey paid off, and today he’s a full-fledged member of the legendary group and the fourth guitarist in their history after Ritchie Blackmore, Tommy Bolin and Morse (Joe Satriani never became an official member after a brief stretch of playing live with them).
McBride is now by far the youngest member of this hardy outfit, led by four ‘old cats’ who have all long since become heavy rock icons. Even by Deep Purple’s usual sarcastic standards, “=1” is an unusual album title (with an equally unusual cover). It’s a metaphor for a certain state of affairs where things get so complex that they eventually circle back to the original, simplest state and everything just becomes one. Whatever the case, most of the lyrics on the album are dripping with sarcasm and a pinch of black humor, and in keeping with long tradition they deal with the woes of ‘fateful’ women, various forms of social injustice, and the everyday misadventures of four blokes in their late golden years.
The album, once again made under longtime Deep Purple collaborator and legendary producer Bob Ezrin, packs in a whopping 13 tracks, which wasn’t the smartest move, because somewhere past the halfway point “=1” starts to show the first signs of ‘fatigue’, with some motifs and arrangements getting a bit repetitive. McBride is a superb guitarist and a real virtuoso, worthy of the legacy of his famous guitar predecessors, but as a songwriter he’ll need to mature a bit before he reaches Morse’s creative level. Then again, the slightly repetitive, mildly ‘sleepy’ feel of the album’s second half isn’t all down to him, since on Deep Purple albums all the band members traditionally contribute as songwriters.
After the excellent “Whoosh!” (2020, RockLine review), expecting another record on that level was somewhat unrealistic. Still, “=1” is a good, even very good album, and with it these ‘deep purple’ veterans have once again proven that most of their peers could only envy them when it comes to making new music. For his age, Gillan is still in splendid vocal shape, even though he’s long avoided the extreme high registers and only lets out a brief scream here and there, more as a joke than anything else. Meanwhile, Airey’s rustling, juicy layers of Hammond organ, always the trademark sound of this legendary band, long ago reached the level of the late organ chieftain Jon Lord. Airey has once again thrown in a few orchestral arrangements here and there, which is why Deep Purple these days earn the respect of many a prog rock gourmet. And the rhythm tandem of Glover’s massive bass lines and Paice’s trademark drum fills has been the very definition of consistency since 1970, and a model for plenty of younger heavy rock rhythm duos.
The album opens with “Show Me” in classic style: a mockingly upbeat Gillan, massive layers of Hammond organ, ‘appropriate’ guitar phrases and instantly recognizable drum fills. The song itself is nothing special, but it’s in true Purple spirit, and for most fans that’ll be enough. Gillan, who became a widower in 2022, doesn’t dwell much on the loss of his wife Bron (incidentally, their daughter Grace is following in her father’s vocal footsteps) on “A Bit On the Side”, since some Charlene keeps rattling around in his head. Along the way he even drops a few of the signature ‘oh-ah’ sighs that marked his singing back when he was a lot younger. “Sharp Shooter” is also great fun, with the hard rocking grandpas proving, as far as musical ‘rumbling’ goes, that they’re nowhere near ready for the scrapheap, while Airey and McBride casually show off their enviable solo chops along the way.
“Portable Door” is the album’s first single and also its best, with Gillan practically melting with snark as he sings, while the ‘duels’ between organ and guitar passages once again come off superbly. “Old-Fangled Thing” features an almost iconoclastic Deep Purple guitar phrase. It’s commendable that McBride brings his own approach to the guitar instead of trying to imitate Morse or Blackmore, while the cheeky lyrics contain a reference to the old classic “Living Wreck”. The slow-paced “If I Were You” opens like a ballad but quickly ‘mutates’ into yet another typical Purple heavy rocker. A bit of a shame, really, because a little more subtlety and refinement, if not mystique, is exactly what McBride’s guitar approach is missing for now compared to his American predecessor and the ‘guitar Robin Hood in black’.
“Pictures of You,” the second single from the album, is another characteristic, by no means bad creation, but it lacks a bit more arrangement depth, rhythmic juice and a better chorus to make it into the pantheon of ‘eternal’ Purple classics. This is exactly where the album gets a little tired after its impressive opening stretch, which you can hear on tracks that are average by usual Purple standards, like “I’m Saying Nothin'”, where the most fun element is Gillan’s growling vocal outburst at the end, and “Lazy Sod”, the album’s third single, which is saved from being generic by Airey’s organ shenanigans. While listening to the rhythmically wound-up and guitar-sharpened “Now You Are Talkin'”, longtime fans will be entertained mostly by yet another (if brief) Gillan screaming moment.
Listening to “No Money to Burn”, what will stick in your memory is mainly Airey’s passionate organ solo, while “I’ll Catch You” is the only real ballad on the album, and on it McBride finally shows off his subtler, slightly more ethereal and refined side with a melancholic solo, the kind Morse and especially Blackmore loved to indulge in. Let’s hope McBride gets more chances for moments like this in the future.
The most complex track on the album, if not the best, and one that almost borders on progressive rock, is, interestingly, the closer “Bleeding Obvious”. It’s got no shortage of witty acoustic and symphonic moments, while some of the instrumental passages, where witty Hammond organ runs and razor-sharp guitar phrases go head to head, bring back the ‘good old days’ when Deep Purple were innovators in all sorts of areas on what was then a young rock scene.
“=1” is a highly promising start to a new era for these indestructible heavy rock patriarchs, who are determined not to rest on their laurels even after a change of guitarist. Its true quality compared to their past discography is actually hard to judge, especially given that Deep Purple made their best studio work back in the first half of the seventies. At the same time, “=1” isn’t on the level of the three best albums of the Morse era, namely “Purpendicular” (1996), “Now What?!” (2013) and “Whoosh!”. Regardless, it’s more or less guaranteed to sit on par with the rest of the records from this period (it even tops some of them a little), which bodes very well for the future. As mentioned, the main problem keeping it out of the ranks of unforgettable Deep Purple studio masterpieces is the sheer number of tracks, which leaves it a bit ‘out of breath’ in the second half, despite the excellent closer. Considering that most of their heavy rock pioneer peers have either called it a day or can no longer muster their former songwriting and arranging greatness in old age, this is a top-notch studio achievement that will no doubt make most longtime fans happy.
Author: Peter “Dr. ProgRock” Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Show Me (4:00)
2. A Bit on the Side (4:11)
3. Sharp Shooter (3:45)
4. Portable Door (3:49)
5. Old-Fangled Thing (4:09)
6. If I Were You (4:43)
7. Pictures of You (3:52)
8. I’m Saying Nothin’ (3:29)
9. Lazy Sod (3:41)
10. Now You’re Talkin’ (4:06)
11. No Money to Burn (3:22)
12. I’ll Catch You (3:21)
13. Bleeding Obvious (5:51)
Lineup:
Ian Gillan – vocals
Roger Glover – bass
Ian Paice – drums
Don Airey – keyboards
Simon McBride – guitar
