Deep Purple - Perfect Strangers - 1984
Ritchie Blackmore! Ian Gillan! Jon Lord! The whole band is back! It's a Mark II DP reunion!
So how is it?!?!?
Eh.
Look, these guys can obviously play. And they know their instruments, how to play them and they know each others' instruments and how to play off them.
That would be great if they had anything to say or something propelling them to create some great psychedelic metal. But craptastic jams like "Mean Streak" seem designed to let their masturbatory musical impulses play out to the the point where an audience really doesn't matter.
I kind of enjoy the music here but only in that I appreciate that it isn't pisspoor. It's about as on par with latter day Genesis. Although "A Gipsy's Kiss" reignites that terrific Blakmore/Lord oneupsmanship that made the band so interesting a decade + before. And "Wasted Sunsets" while trite is a musical excitement and one that leads into the album's most interesting , the quasi-eastern european "Hungry Daze".
There's more to interest a casual listener on Perfect Strangers than one would notice from the first half. PS fits right in the DP canon. It won't surprise you, but it won't fully disappoint.
Grade: C
ASide: Knocking at Your Backdoor, Hungry Daze
BlindSide: A Gipsy's Kiss (I know it sounds like it fell off a Roger taylor record, but I think that's why I like it. ), Wasted Sunsets
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