BANANAS

Five long years between their last and disgusting "Abandon" album and this one. Exit Jon Lord : one of the founding members and probably the best hard rock keyboard player. He will still be credited for two songs. He will be replaced by someone of the family (or almost) : Don Airey who has hold the keys for several years with Rainbow. I guess there is no better choice.

When I discovered the cover artwork, I was expecting the worse. The title of the album is also weird. I started to listen this album with suspectful care. At a first glance, this is album sounds heavier than usual (although they have never been romantic, right) ?

"House of Pain", "Sun Goes Down", Silver Tongue" are slow tempo hard-rock songs; you know type, "Maybe I'a Leo" or "Bloodsucker". Not my faves. "Haunted" is a rock ballad with average melody. Too syrupy for my taste. The album goes on with the same type of monotonous, AOR music with "Razzle Dazzle". My deception is high, since I had really expected a lot better from the Purple after such a poor album like "Abandon".

The long and bluesy "Walk On" saves the album from complete misery. Although that in this exercise (blues-oriented songs), I prefer the Hughes vocals. Do not expect anything à la "Mistreated" though (I guess that this was maybe an attempt) but the song is good. "Picture of Innocence" is a combination of some previous features : slow hard-rock with a bluesy influence at times. A good song as well. "I've Got Your Number" is not too bad a track : quite rocking.

"Never a Word" is almost prog : spacey / church keys to start and a very, very quiet vocal part afterwards. This is rather an unusual Purple song but it gives a bit of variety to this rather dull and monotonous album. The title track rocks all right and is one of the very few good tracks so far. The closing number sounds as a Steve Hackett one (which is nice but it is not really what you expect from the Purple).

It is one of the poorest Purple effort (IMO). "Bananas" is very repetitive album (with too few exceptions). One gets the impression of hearing the same song indefinitely.Pretty boring. I can only rate this one two stars. Sorry guys.

PS : by the way, I have seen in another review for this release that the Purple has a career of 47 years. Although they are not youngsters, I will just remind you that they started as the Purple in 1968. Even if you take into consideration that Lord did some recording in 1967, Gillan/Glover started in 1966 with Episode Six (as well as Paice with MI 5), and that Ritchie was playing with the Outlaws as soon as 1964, this does not make it 47 at the time of the release of "Bananas", right ?