RITCHIE BLACKMORE'S RAINBOW

RITCHIE BLACKMORE'S RAINBOW
STRANGER IN US ALL (1995)
320 KBPS

After Ritchie left Purple in November '93 because of yet another clash with the band (namely Gillan), we were all poised to see (hear) what Ritchie's next move would be. Interestingly, he decided to resurrect Rainbow. Not so interestingly, he chose a bunch of who-knows cohorts to join him in the project. Ritchie was getting more into medieval themes than ever, and it shows in the sleeve photos and song titles - which was just fine with me. But not so fine with me was the album's middle-of-the-road approach. Nothing really sears or cooks on Stranger, rather it just bubbles along. Doogie White shows spooky parallels with Joe Lynn Turner, without the Prima Donna attitude. John O'Reilly was basically listening to a metronome when choosing his back beats. Or was it a metronome and they gave John a few bucks to include his name and picture? Anyway, the point is: it's all fairly boring. By far the most interesting move was in the hiring of hex-counterpointer Candice Night (Ritchie's girlfriend) as backup vocalist. A very un-Rainbowlike move. And she does a nice if unremarkable job on the record's best track, "Ariel." "Black Masquerade" is cool, I love Ritchie's acoustic playing here (and on the intro to the updated "Still I'm Sad" with lyrics) and wish he would play it more often. Well, I guess I should be careful at what I wish for because he did play acoustic much more on his followup project, Blackmore's Night. What all this nonsense all boils down to is that we could have had a far more exciting album from a team of more accomplished musicians to accompany Ritchie. Instead we are left with an elegant recording with little personality. For completists only.

1. Wolf to the Moon
2. Cold Hearted Woman
3. Hunting Humans (Insatiable)
4. Stand and Fight
5. Ariel
6. Too Late for Tears
7. Black Masquerade
8. Silence
9. Hall of the Mountain King
10. Still I'm Sad