Deep Purple's second album saw the band opting for a slightly more progressive sound, epic song structures such as on 'Shield' and enigmatic closer 'River deep, mountain high' showing the band's young musical talent and using each of their respective instruments to the fullest effect. There are still a few cover songs such as 'We can work it out' courtesy of the Beatles and 'Kentucky woman', and although Deep Purple didn't quite match the quality found on the original versions, it still showed them as a band with a very promising future.

Written by musicalkaratekid on 20.05.2013 at 20:52

Deep Purple's second album saw the band opting for a slightly more progressive sound, epic song structures such as on 'Shield' and enigmatic closer 'River deep, mountain high' showing the band's young musical talent and using each of their respective instruments to the fullest effect. There are still a few cover songs such as 'We can work it out' courtesy of the Beatles and 'Kentucky woman', and although Deep Purple didn't quite match the quality found on the original versions, it still showed them as a band with a very promising future.

great post, nice to see Rod Evans era get some love.

7.4? makes me feel sad.

When progheads classify MK 1 Deep Purple as proto-prog, they know what they are saying. What Jon Lord was doing on these 3 albums was ahead of its time (he said he was influenced by the likes of Vanilla Fudge, but he went far beyond what VF was doing).

After the debut I hoped they would have dropped the covers and played more their own stuff. From the covers I'm only enjoying Kentucky Woman. "Listen, Learn, Read On" and "Shield" are great, trippy-ish songs, in overall I don't think the album is highly impressing. I say maybe 2-3 songs gets to replay.