Deep Purple

Abandon (CMC)
by Martin Popoff

Bloody ‘ell, Deep Purple prove the magnificence of Purpendicular was no fluke. So Abandon (or as the cover suggests: ABandOn) emerges, and a bunch of 50-year-olds has just restated their top-tier creativity, maturity, sonic sensuality, and effortless hard rock joy. The buzz on this record is highly positive for good reason, the band compressing their unquestionable chemistry with guitarist Steve Morse, settling into what is mostly a surprisingly heavy, mid-pace, grinding blues metal hybrid. What churns authoritatively out the other end is more like complicated, electrified, diddly riffs with a funk edge, Jon Lord’s anachronistic Hammond power chords rising to meet the sanitized ones from Morse, the two meeting in the middle for that aforementioned oddly transparent chemistry, one built of individual performances that are entirely subtle and ego-void, yet ironically worthy in isolation. Drummer Ian Paice’s the pantheon of elegance as usual, really letting fly on personal fave “Seventh Heaven,” a grumbly, rumbly foreboding metal masher with an odd time signature and one of those cryptic, knowing, rocker-past-morality lyrics, a concept that ebbs and flows through most of Ian Gillan’s irresistible, playful words, Ian mixing the color of place and memory with this quite uncharted theme of what happens when life has delivered way too much in the way of fun. Main complaint: few of those drop-dead life-enhancing melodies that took Purpendicular stratospheric. But that makes Abandon a less pandering, more musicianly, tough-hided, walk through dark woods, more of an even-keeled, deliberate concept.
(5226 Greens Dairy Rd. Raleigh, NC 27616)