Deep Purple

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Deep Purple - Now What?! (2013)

It took Deep Purple seven years to put out the follow-up to 2005's Rapture of the Deep. We won't take so long....so let's dig into the final Deep Purple album of the discography discussion! Posing both a question of direction and a defiance, the album title Now What?! asks the question of Deep Purple's relevance and place in the 2010s...So how does Now What?! hold up?

Opener A Simple Song breaks the DP "straight outta the gate" tradition with it's somber atmosphere before really kicking into gear at around the half way mark. Don Airey plays like possessed by the late great Jon Lord as the Hammond both swirls and screams. Great! The lyrics seems to be about time in general, when to stop, when to go on with the things in life...and the vocal melody on top of the Gillan lines:

Why does the promise fade
You lie on the bed you make

Is another part of this song that I really enjoy. Out of Hand and Hell To Pay pushes the album on and are both two pieces of fine classic hard rock! Out of Hand starts out like the more cultivated cousin of Perfect Strangers with stabbing keyboard playing before digging into a usual DP groove. Hell To Pay starts off like the more traditional DP blues inspired song but really contains some nice catchy moments and two outstanding solos by both Airey and Morse!!

I'm very impressed by the breathable atmosphere in a song like Above and Beyond, it sounds almost folky, a song apparently composed to the memory of Jon Lord and then comes the epic Blood From a Stone...It starts off slow with some twangy, almost surf like guitars and dreamy keyboards while Ian Paice provides a great shuffling groove. As the song moves on the song grows slowly in power during the choruses. I can't help to think of the late keyboard player Ray Manzarek from The Doors when I hear the keyboard licks here. A very atypical Deep Purple song....But still distinctively Deep Purple!

All The Time In The World starts off like a Hendrix piece but transforms into a song reminiscent of the early 70s stuff from Burn and Stormbringer. Very funky and very easy going stuff. of course Deep Purple has to be singing about themselves here. ..."Here we are, with all the time in the world"...

Vincent Price. What a "monster" of a track! That hammond-intro by Airey...Slow head bopping riff by Morse...All of the sudden the band takes the time out to do a jam in the middle and Glover and Paice lays in the pocket perfectly to give Morse the space to jam out a pretty neat and slow solo before Airey joins them and gives the song an epic finish! I love the small sound effects throughout the song as well, squeaking doors, rattling chains. Gillan tries to let out one of his famous screams at the end and while it's not really there, it really doesn't matter. A good album, again seeing Purple do what THEY want to do.
 
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WRAP-UP: :)

This discography discussion has been almost a year underway now. And to wrap it all up I'd like to say I've certainly acquired a bigger appreciation for some of the not so well-known Purple eras. First of all, I feel like I understand Purple way better than I did before...and while the classic Purple stuff is hard to beat, I'm probably more likely now to put on some of the early Rod Evans stuff, like the self titled album or venture into the 80s and 90s Purple......I'm also VERY surprised at the quality of the Steve Morse stuff and wouldn't hesitate to recommend Now What?! Rapture of The Deep and Bananas a long side Machine Head, Fireball, Perfect Strangers to people in the future!

I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to this thread. Be it big or small, personal anecdotes, links, reviews whatever. An extra BIG thanks goes out to the regulars in: @Black Bart , @bearfan and @Zare who kept the discussions rolling when we weren't dissecting the most important albums in the discography...and without whom I would probably have lost interest in the project myself!
 
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Now What?! is just fricking brilliant. Save Machine Head and In Rock ... probably their best album. Musically it is so good, the vocals fit Gillan really well where his voice is at this age. The songs just flow into each other so well... in a way that reminds me of AMOLAD. It really is a musical journey. It is insane that they could come out with something so good so late in their career. Bob Ezrin is a brilliant producer and got everything he could out of the band. Supposedly he did (is doing?) their next album, which I really look forward to. He captured the live "jam-iness" of the band into some well structured songs.

All The Time In the World is really a favorite of mine, it is sung so well and really moody.
 
SixesAlltheway said:
WRAP-UP: :)

This discography discussion has been almost a year underway now. And to wrap it all up I'd like to say I've certainly acquired a bigger appreciation for some of the not so well-known Purple eras. First of all, I feel like I understand Purple way better than I did before...and while the classic Purple stuff is hard to beat, I'm probably more likely now to put on some of the early Rod Evans stuff, like the self titled album or venture into he 90s Purple......I'm also VERY surprised at the quality of the Steve Morse stuff and wouldn't hesitate to recommend Now What?! Rapture of The Deep and Bananas a long side Machine Head, Fireball, Perfect Strangers to people in the future!

I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to this thread. Be it big or small, personal anecdotes, links, reviews whatever. An extra BIG thanks goes out to the regulars in: @Black Bart , @bearfan and @Zare who kept the discussions rolling when we weren't dissecting the most important albums in the discography...and without whom I would probably have lost interest in the project myself!
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Thanks for doing this, it got me to listen to some albums I had not listened to in quite a while. Really under rated band in the US that fixates on Smoke on the Water ... I think Lars nailed it pretty well when he said Purple should be in the same class as Sabbath and Zeppelin in the US ... they have had a long string of fantastic musicians and singers over their career that have created so much good music.
 
It was (is) a great topic, Sixes. I believe I still owe you Satriani era uploads. Lemme find some time in near future for that.
 
Ah right. Looking forward to that :)

We can always go back and discuss some of these albums/songs/tours again if something new comes up :)
 
That riff sounds good.
Unlike Blackmore. The 'new' Rainbow sounds awful, has 0 energy in it left.
 
Brilliant :) That was from the Celebrating Jon Lord show at the Royal Albert Hall in 2014. The closing track :)

Bruce also did Burn with Glenn Hughes. Nice vocal harmonies between them on this track

 
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