Deep Purple

Deep Purple retains the first lineup’s psychedelic color while moving more deeply into heavy riffs and intricate song construction. Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar and Jon Lord’s organ do not merely accompany one another; both step forward to create the music’s tension. Rod Evans brings a poised vocal contrast to the swirl of sound, while Nick Simper and Ian Paice keep the more changeable arrangements supple and grounded. The percussion-led motion of “Chasing Shadows,” the delicate shadows of “Lalena,” and the extended design of “April” show a band interested not only in melody but in how scenes of sound can change before the listener. Blues roots, classical suggestion, and psychedelic drift coexist, yet there are already flashes of the weight associated with the Deep Purple to come. As the final album by the Mark I lineup, it also stands just before a major transformation. Its appeal lies less in a neat conclusion than in the traces of experiment: parts colliding, answering, and gradually building a story together. Listeners should approach it for that fresh, unsettled quality as much as for its riffs. It is an ambitious, shifting record with the instability of a band discovering what it can become.