Description

This limited vinyl single was the first single to be released from Deep Purples nineteenth album ‘Now What’. This album was recorded with no musical rules… and it shows a modern and fresh production… to the point that Deep Purple have never sounded so close to the spirit of the 70s in the last 20 years as they do now. This is an album that has the excellence and elegance of ‘Perfect Strangers’ and the wild freedom of ’Made In Japan’. The first track ‘Hell to Pay’ is pretty close to their stated goal of returning to the classic Deep Purple sound. That doesn’t mean that ‘Hell to Pay’ is the second coming of ‘Smoke on the Water,’ but the track is certainly closer to the spirit of classic Deep Purple than the B-side track, a somewhat down-tempo song titled ‘All the Time in the World.’ The two songs are as different as night and day. ‘Hell to Pay’ features a guitar/organ bed track that is definitely a deliberate musical reference to Purple’s musical past — to the point that guitarist Steve Morse and keyboardist Don Airey seem like they are deliberately trying to imitate their successors in the band. Not that that’s a bad thing — the result is a satisfying mix of old and new that should please Deep Purple fans who want to hear the band rock. That said, there’s really no getting around the fact that Ian Gillan’s voice sounds very different than it did when he was younger. He’s singing in his mid-range here, and sounds like he’s straining even in the higher parts of that limited reach. He certainly delivers a more aggressive vocal than he did on ‘All the Time in the World,’ but if you’re looking for the kind of vocal gymnastics that characterized past Purple outings, then you need to pull out your old records and listen to them. The highlight of the track is a typically inventive guitar solo from Morse, who rose to the seemingly impossible challenge of replacing Ritchie Blackmore in Purple by steadfastly playing the guitar as well as humanly possible over a long period of time. The song’s main guitar riff sounds like classic Deep Purple, but Morse’s solo is so indicative of his unique signature style that it could have been lifted from any of his other projects — and that’s a good thing, since his playing makes most other rock guitarists look like amateurs posing as musicians. The B-side track ‘All the Time in the World’ is a tune that basically amounts to a middle-of-the-road exercise merely finds the remaining Purple ones acting their collective age; but that’s little consolation to those who will find it more suitable for programming as background music in retirement homes, than blaring from concert stages everywhere. In any case, the point is fans should not come looking for razor-sharp guitar teeth from Steve Morse or even spirited keyboard flourishes from Don Airey – never mind anything remotely akin to Ian Paice’s percussive explosiveness in years past – but rather an altogether pleasant, mild-mannered, if ever so slightly nostalgic, recycling of ‘Purpendicular’s’ ‘Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming.’ Only where the latter obviously held pent up fury at bay behind Morse’s melancholy vamps, the former can only muster resigned philosophy delivered tongue-in cheek courtesy of Ian Gillan, who himself performs with the utmost temperance, far removed from the shrieking banshee of yesteryear. All of which, once again, is not to dismiss ‘All the Time in the World’ as a bad song (it’s really not!), but qualify it as a surprisingly tepid, uncharacteristic one resembling, not the electrifying, fire-breathing Deep Purple of old, but the mature work of elder statesmen – and that’s hardly the sort of escapism some listeners will expect out of rock stars, now is it? A limited vinyl single with Deep Purple in 2013 is a fun idea and the A-side ‘Hell To Pay’ is a great track. In the end, it’s pretty unlikely that it will replace ‘Highway Star’ as anyone’s favorite Purple track — but it’s still a worthy addition to the band’s overall output, and better in most respects than most of the new music that classic bands are putting out today. Track listing: 1. Hell To Pay-radio edit 2. All The Time In The World-radio mix edit