PERFECT STRANGERS

As fate would have it, the members of Deep Purple's famous Mark II, immersed and scattered in different projects (Ritchie Blackmore and Roger Glover with Rainbow, Jon Lord with Whitesnake, Ian Gillan with his solo project and the failed attempt of 'Born Again' with Black Sabbath, and Ian Paice with Gary Moore's band), agreed that it was time to iron out their differences and give a second life to the band's most emblematic line-up. And what seemed impossible happened eleven years after 1973's "Who Do We Think We Are", the last joint work, with the release of "Perfect Strangers" (1984), the Englishmen's eleventh album.

A proposal that, although it no longer has the power and carefree nature of musicians with more than a decade of experience behind them, follows a balanced and well-balanced line, in which two of the singles that supported its release stand out: the intriguing and lascivious "Knocking At Your Back Door" with the tense introductory atmosphere that Lord creates with his Hammonds, and the thick and mysterious half-time of the orientalised "Perfect Strangers" and its nods to Zeppelin's 'Kashmir'; and the melancholic power ballad "Wasted Sunsets" with Blackmore's hurtful guitar solo and Gillan's best vocal performance on the album.

The rest of the songs, oriented towards an agile hard rock adapted to the demands of the convulsive and changing decade of the eighties, maintain a very good level, in which the sound base built from Glover's bass and Paice's spirited drums full of cymbals sustain the riffs and guitar solos that Blackmore intersperses with Lord's arresting keyboard playing on the lively "Under the Gun", "Nobody's Home", "Mean Streak" and "A Gypsy's Kiss".

Finally, "Hungry Daze", with its dancing riffs of Arabic airs and an experimental sci-fi interlude, provides the differentiating touch to an album as unexpected as it was celebrated, which reached fifth place in the UK and seventeenth in the US charts and revived Deep Purple's career.

P.S. The remastered 1999 version includes "Not Responsible" and Blackmore's very interesting and extended experimental jam "Son of Alerik" (B-side of the single 'Perfect Strangers'), which is well worth a listen.

3.5/4 stars

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