I'm in serious danger of wearing out the grooves of my Bananas CD. Inspired songwriting, superb musicianship and crisp, polished production. But why do I hear criticism of the title and cover? Where's yer sense of humour? Purple at their best were a fun band and this album has the elements I've always loved: dazzling instrumental interplay, grandiose arrangements, Ian Gillan's powerful vocals, oft wry lyrics and the swing of drummer Ian Paice and bassist Roger Glover. On a few tracks they even venture into never before trodden territory - way to go, guys! Making his purple recording debut, keyboard maestro Don Airey leaps onto the roundabout and, in contrast to the new tonalities guitar whiz Steve Morse infused in ninety-five, the Hammond sound we know and love has an air of familiarity.... thanks Don. A credible and incredible lineup of The Purps sans Blackmore and Lord... who'd have thunk it? You see, the challenge of a band with a track record like Deep Purple is that their latest offering will often be compared with their past landmarks, so a word of advice: try to do the impossible and listen to this album as if it were by a new, unknown act. I think you'll be very pleasantly surprised.

House of Pain

A tribute to their long-standing manager, Bruce Payne? I think not. This one kicks off with a four-on-the-floor geetar riff punctuated with cowbell, reminiscent of Take It Off the Top from Morsey's Dixie Dregs repertoire. But with the first banshee scream, that's where the similarity ends. It's a full-throttle rock 'n' roller coaster where "my friends all say I'm losing it big time" and a massive chorus chant that'll need Steve and Roger's support in concert. Steve's solo incorporates Billy Gibbonlike false harmonics (come to think of it, the song is very ZZ Purp), there's a nod to Jon from Don and we're into an escalating series of guitar/organ runs. Thrilling stuff! Hang on, I'll just check if my player is on 78 rpm; nope it's on 33. Fading out with Gillan's harmonica and screams, the ride has just begun. As a live opener, the crowd would go bananas.

Sun Goes Down

A sinister organ intro recalls Perfect Stranglers and heralds a heavier sound; this is classic Purple and one of Paicey's favourites. Guitar and organ mesh on a menacing riff, laying the foundations for passionate vocals from Big G. Just wait for the middle section where drums alone accompany the singing, culminating in a whole lotta zep wail. In fact, IG's vocals are truly outstanding on the entire album. Is the man getting younger or what? Steve's solo is oh so cool and Don's frantic, demented organ solo carries us over the horizon as the sun goes down. Whew!

Haunted

Hmmm..... okay let's word this carefully. A high school friend once taught me that music is neither good nor bad, it's all a matter of taste. With its string section and female backing vocals, this ballad is not a bad song - it's simply not my cup of fruit. But if you like it, I'm genuinely happy for you. Are they aiming for an AOR hit single? Does everyone in the band actually like this song? Admittedly, Steve pulls off a blinder of a solo. It may grow on me, I'll get back to you in a year.

Razzle Dazzle

A very commercial sound, my friends all say I'm crazy, but I don't mind this jaunty little tune. Dense, harmonised vocals in the catchy chorus and "what are we doing here, nobody remembers!" tickles my funny bone, dunno why, it just does. Love the treated spacey vocals in the middle... producer Bradford's influence? Neat tambourine and go Donny on the honky tonk piano! Reminding me vaguely of Mary Long, in the seventies this one would have had "hit single" stamped all over it.

Silver Tongue

Another of little Ian's faves, it's based on his rhythmic idea - an insistent monotonal industrial groove, fuelled by Don's organic synths. Distant cousin of Unwritten Law, love this one, some great heavy riffing in the middle, makes me wanna dance! Gillan's in fine voice again and recycles "I may be crazy but I'm not stupid" from Abandon's Watching the Sky - how white album Beatlesque. What a brilliant fade: amidst discordant organ chords and metallic six string squawking, Gillan scats with the bluesy guitar theme. Very cool.

Walk On

Now here's a ballad I really love, this is hauntingly beautiful. Wistful vocals and superb rising and falling dynamics take us on a nice comfy Sunday ride. See, I really am a sensitive kinda guy. Hearing "you mean more to me than just a pretty face" and "you know I don't like to fight, no matter who's wrong or right", we wonder if we've heard our singer so sentimental before. But sappy this song ain't. We're treated to a perfect ending with lazy organ noodlings, a nifty bass flourish from Roger and atmospheric sound effects which bring us gently down to earth.

Picture of Innocence

I set my CD player to "shuffle" mode and this one kicked in. A funky snare and finger clicking prelude from Messrs Paice and Morse gives no real indication of what's to come. Whoa, this song is a monster, totally blows me away! The five youngsters in this quintet fuse together in a mighty way. With a commanding chorus "no deals, no strokes, no forbidden fruit and no holy smoke", when Gillan's angry he may be self-righteous but he's not bitter. The piece is rousing, but too adventurous, too prog to become an anthem - how could your average punter remember so many words? I've heard Steve describe Paicey as "a heavy Ringo" and, with his groovy stumbling fills, he can take that as a compliment... but you and I know he's much, much better.

I've Got Your Number

At exactly six minutes, another very complex number. It succeeds where, to me, similar tracks on Abandon failed. Again, everyone shines and there's plenty of light and shade. Dynamics have always been a hallmark of Deep Purple's greatest works. Replete with a multitude of indestructible guitar/bass/organ/synth riffs, this epic slinks, turns and syncopates. I've heard diehard ritchiephiles debating endlessly whether Steve's riffs are on par with Ritchie's. It's a pointless argument: if Steve's too different, he's not gonna satisfy 'em and if he's too similar then he's derivative and boring! I love them both, but Steve is unquestionably the guitarist for purple.mark8.com. This track and every other vindicates the decision to invite Don to be Jon's replacement. But was Jon's knee the real reason they asked Don to dep on their 2001Scandinavian? Gee I'd love to know. A lovely gesture for Jon to lend Don his Hammond indefinitely. Did Jon play on the album?

Never a Word

A lighter shade of purple, quite a departure from their recognisable sound, what a little gem. Madrigal influences abound with baroque guitar, church organ and maybe harpsichord. Intentionally misplaced drum accents add interest. Two-thirds through and our minstrel appears, singing tenderly in unison with the guitar melody. Simple but effective. Is "someone as lost in love as he..... all day, all Night" a sly reference to the man in black tights and his fair maiden? Ask cryptic wordsmiths Gillan and Glover and you may be none the wiser!

Bananas

Wow, the first time I've heard the Deeps using time signatures of sevens and fives! I can't dance to that. Steve's influence? Quite possibly. But how the hell can they make the track flow in such weird compound times? Says Steve "that's Ian Paice who always keeps the swing going" and, the only surviving founder member reveals, it was "a little confusing, but it sorted itself out in the studio". At almost five minutes, the last two minutes are an exhilarating tussle between Airey and Morse which include a totally bananas series of runs played at a breakneck pace. Remember when we first heard the harmonised runs on Mandrake Root from their first album? Man, I love self-indulgent music, stuff that Lou Reed fans would find lurid. And what of the song itself? A very tasty, somewhat bent crop with magnificent vocals, bluesy lunch wrapper and a seemingly seamless rhythm section from the men in bandanas. Too clever by half. "Now my love is richer than rich, cause I've studied mathematics, graduated without honours, everyone has gone bananas!"

Doing it Tonight

Bo Diddley visits Latin America? Not the least bit hard rock, but very catchy (there's that word again), this one got stuck in my brain for a day. I really like it! Roger and Ian lock into an infectious rhythm with subtle inflections that bear repeated listens. "I'm ragged round the edges" claims Gillan, quoting Jack Ruby from the previous elpee, more fab Sgt Purple. The headbangers may be scratching their receding hairlines, but that's their problem. This song will be the major international hit that will put Deep Purple back on the map.

Contact Lost

Sublime. Steve's touching ode to the tragic space shuttle Columbia event. The first instrumental on a purple album for yonks, it's the perfect ending to a classic album. With stunning legato guitar orchestration, Steve has explored this territory in his Dregs and solo journeys, but this is "very special" according to Paice. At just ninety seconds, we're left wanting more, so flip the CD over and replay.

Conclusion

Congratulations chaps, it was well worth the wait, but please don't make us wait five years until the next one. Mark eight can be very proud of this masterpiece. Ten out of ten. We thaaaaaaank you, yeow! Heartfelt thanks to the fourteen concrete gods who've given us over thirty-five years of awesome aural pleasure.

...

Bananas is a great Hard Rock album by a bunch of top musicians. Deep Purple have been going since 1968 with a break from 1976-1984, during which there was not an actual band called Deep Purple in circulation. So, depending your point of view the band is either celebrating their 27th anniversary, or the 35th. If you do not count the mountains of live albums and compilations, this is their seventeenth studio album. Confused yet? You soon will be.

Bananas is the first release of new material in five years and the first Deep Purple album not to feature the talents of Jon Lord on keyboards, who retired from the band (but not music) last year to make way for Don Airey. This is Airey's first studio outing with the band, and very admirably he does, too. It is lead guitarist Steve Morse's third studio album with Purple, and lead vocalist Ian Gillan's tenth. Bassist Roger Glover counts it as his eleventh, and sitting behind the drums for his seventeenth Deep Purple album is one of the world's finest Rock 'n' Roll drummer, Mr. Ian Paice. He has also played drums at every Deep Purple show that has taken place. When Deep Purple was on a sabbatical from 1976-1984, Ian Paice kept his hand in by drumming for P.A.L., Whitesnake (both of whom featured Jon Lord), and Gary Moore, both in the studio and live in concert. So Ian Paice makes Deep Purple the complete mirror image of Spinal Tap by keeping the drum position the only stable one.

For variation there has never been a Deep Purple album to compare to Bananas. You would have to go back to the heady days of 1972 and Machine Head to find the band in more classic form. Although almost all Deep Purple albums have their good moments, this one has class stamped all the way through the Bananas.

Opener 'House of Pain' is a typical Purple rocker with a great opening guitar lick from Steve Morse before the rest of the band come rocking in. Then you get Ian Gillan, the only real voice of Deep Purple, breaking in on top of the band to sing about... Guess what! ....the wonders of sex. Remember, I said there was great variation on this album. I never said things had completely changed. Then we get a short sharp solo from Steve Morse, then Don Airey, before they both compete with each other in a duel between keyboards and sixstring before Gillan brings the song to a conclusion with the final verse. 'House of Pain' will make a great new opener to the Purple live set.

This is followed by the heavy rock of 'Sun goes down'. Deep Purple have never been heavy metal and this song is a good example of their own hard rock genre, giving new boy Don Airey another chance to shine.

Third song 'Haunted' is one of the album's many highlights, a ballad which will now surely replace the over familiar 'When a Blind man cries' in the live set. The emotional guitar solo from Steve Morse is accompanied with a tour de force vocal performance from Ian Gillan, and the behind string arrangements from the master of his art Paul Buckmaster.

When Deep Purple write a song called 'Razzle Dazzle', does this dog have to tell you what it's about or what it will sound like? 'Silver Tongue' is a real down and dirty rocker driven along by the dynamic rhythm section of Roger Glover and Ian Paice. Keeping these two together is good enough reason for me getting Deep Purple on the road. Has there ever been a better pairing in Rock 'n' Roll?

The one complaint I overheard from other Purple fans is that if you have the best guitarist in the world, why not use him more on your records? Well, Steve Morse gets to do a short solo on every track on the album, and it must be remembered that this is a Deep Purple album, of which Steve is a member. It is not a Steve Morse album. So if you want to hear a seven minute guitar solo by Steve Morse, go and buy his solo album.

'Walk On', the following song, is a perfect example of harmony; sounding almost like a studio jam, where every member of the band sounds comfortable in each others company.

'Picture of Innocence' is a genuine funky song given the Purple treatment almost as if there had been a collaboration between the band and the late great Ian Dury.

'I got your Number' would make a great single for the band and will probably be used with great effect on stage, where the boys will stretch it out, making room for longer solos.

'Never a Word' is a number with Steve Morse sounding a little too medieval, and the vocals too weak to this dogs ears; causing a deduction of one precious star. I would of preferred to hear the electric instrumental 'Well Dressed Guitar', which the band played at the Impact Arena in Bangkok in 2002, when we were told it would be on the next studio album.

'Never a Word' is the weakest song on the album. But the ball is quickly picked up again on the rocking 'Bananas', when Morse and Airey really role up the sleeves and have a proper dig. The result is spectacular. A rush of notes bursts out of your speakers with Ian Gillan joining in on Harmonica to bring the song to a rousing conclusion.

'Doing it Tonight' is another fine hard rock song with a very obvious subject matter. Hey, why not? 'Contact Lost' closes the album out with a beautiful instrumental led by Steve Morse. Go Bananas.

...

There really arent that many bands around that have been together since the 60's-70's that are putting out anything worth listening to today (or even in the 90's). Matter of fact, usually a great band are great for about 10 years or so and from then on they try to find the magic they once had (and coming up with some good songs). Even when they do, they often sound tired, monotonous, only a pale reflection of what they once were. But Deep Purple is the exception, they still ROCK!!!!! I have noticed their newer CD's (since the 90's) actually sound pretty good from what I have heard of them. Then I heard Bananas and decided to give it a go and couldnt believe how great this band sounds. Ian Gillan's vocals are great, guitar is fierce, and the energy is still fresh as ever. And most of the songs are well written (only a couple duds) in my opinion yet they even play the weaker tunes with plenty of fervor. Not even bands like Page/Plant, Pink Floyd, or McCartney have come this close to reproducing their signature sound. I plan to see this band on tour this year and I bet they have the same energy in concert that is still being displayed on the new releases. Longgggggggggg live Deep Purple, and to the true fan they are not just a classic nostalgia band like Foreigner or Steve Miller. They have some DAMN good new music to offer.

Yes it is derivative, yes it is the same old same old... yes the tunes and hooks are all done to death... but this is just such an enjoyable album. So what that half of the riffs are reused from their glory days of 1970s? As long as you have fun listening, as long as you catch yourself headbanging along with the relentless drive, why not? And this is definitely better than almost all of their production of the 1990s. "House of Pain" is fun, "Doing It Tonight" is fun and a very catchy tune at that, "Haunted" is a really nice ballad, "Razzle Dazlle" and "Walk On" are also clear favorites. Perhaps some sophistication of Fireball era is missing here but what the heck.. that was 30 years ago... oh goodness... that's a really long time ago and these guys are still chugging along and on top of that released this bucketful of hard-rock guilty pleasure. Rock on!

Now I can see why it took Deep Purple 5 years to release a new studio album. They just don't have any fresh ideas. It has become painfully obvious that the Morse-era Deep Purple used up all its best ideas on 'Perpendicular' and 'Live at the Olympia', both of which arguably rank right up there with the best all-time Purple albums. But both 'Abandon' and now 'Bananas' are great disappointments. Both show a group that is totally bankrupt of musical ideas. Quite frankly, the best songs on this CD are the NON-rock numbers, songs like the ballad "Haunted", the psuedo-folk tune "Never a Word" and the short instrumental "Contact Lost." The "rockers" on this album are mid-tempo plodders with herky-jerky riffs which are totally devoid of melody. Blackmore always wrote and performed catchy, melodic, memorable riffs that stuck in your head. What casual Purple fan could not recite the riff to any Purple song from the seventies or eighties? In contrast, can ANYONE recite the riff to ANY of the so-called hard-rocking numbers from 'Abandon' or 'Bananas'? I can't, and I've listened to these albums numerous times. And Steve morse's guitar playing is becoming very old, very tiring, and very boring very quickly. He has become a tired two-trick pony. He constantly plays a bunch of groaning, note-bending sounds where he sounds like he is trying to imitate Van Halen, himself one of the most boring guitarists on the planet. His other "trick" is to play a whole bunch of notes in a one, two or three-note range very fast, but again there is no memorable sequence of notes which stick in your head; rather, we get what sounds like seemingly random machine-gun like bursts of notes. While I am impressed with his speed, speed alone does not make great guitar-playing. The machine-gun-like bursts combined with the Van-Halen-style groaning and note-bending rapidly become a tiresome, redundant bore as all these so-called "solos" all sound the same. These solos all sound so similar that you could easily take the solo from one song and interject into another song and no one would be the wiser. There is only ONE memorable Morse solo on this disc, and it is the solo in the ballad "Haunted". It is melodic and played with feeling (something far too-often lacking in Morse's solos) and is played "straight" without all the Van Halen gimmiks or machine-gun bursts. As for Don Airey, he is OK but not spectacular on this album. Quite frankly, he sounds like a tired, worn-out John Lord imitation. I found Airey's work on the Rainbow albums of the late 70s to mid 80s to be much more interesting when he was just being himself. Finally, the production isn't particularly exciting. That's what happens when you get a rap/hip-hop producer to produce a rock and roll album. While it's not worse than the Roger Glover productions, it's not any better. It has the same harsh, abrasive, overly trebly quality with a muddy instrument mix that we have all come to know and despise about the Roger Glover-produced albums. In fact, the production sounds eeerily similar to Roger Glover's production style on 'Abandon.' Like another reviewer said, this really sounds like it was thrown together rather quickly; it does indeed sound like a failed attempt to re-live past glories. Steve Morse is a jazz-rock-fusion guitarist who is trying to write and perform riff-rock and he appears out of his element; riff-rock is simply not his forte. It's not surprising that the better songs on both 'Abandon' and 'Bananas' are the pseudo-folk tunes and the ballads. I think at this point these lads should either hang it up or just create an album of ballads and pseudo-folk songs.