If there are rules to reviewing, the cardinal of these must be: "don't criticize something for not being what you'd prefer it to be; judge it on its own terms." Not only is it the only honest way to go about comparing apples and oranges, it also mitigates against the biases we all carry with us. Simply put, if you're listening to a rock album from the 1950s and you think that what it's really missing is extended organ solos, then maybe you're not being a fair arbiter. And while it might not be realistic to believe you have the imagination to put yourself in the time and place when and where your subject was produced, you nonetheless have to try. Machine Head is one of the marker stones for the journey that blues-inflected rock 'n' roll took on its way to heavy metal. On a purely historical level, Deep Purple is an utterly fascinating outfit. They are pioneering architects of sound. The music on this album, however, is of inconsistent quality. "Highway Star" explodes out of the gate with almost as much insistence as "Black Dog." From there, the band dials it back on "Maybe I'm a Leo." Maybe too much. I understand not wanting to blow your wad all at once, but for an album that comes in at a little over 37 minutes, you really don't have any room for weak tracks and this snoozer looks back to Led Zeppelin more than it looks ahead to anything fresh. "Pictures of Home" starts to turn things around before "Never Before" pulls the full 180. It is likely the best song on the album with its slow, funky start giving way to some seriously hard-rocking verses and a killer bridge melody that would make Alex Chilton proud. Then comes the radio staple "Smoke on the Water," with its autobiographical lyrics detailing the band's trials and tribulations in Montreaux. Unfortunately, the song's ubiquity tends to work against it here. In 1972, the listener would have likely considered it the high point, a centerpiece. Now its omnipresence surrounds it with a "been-there-done-that" aura rendering a once-powerful song tepid and tired. The penultimate "Lazy" is anything but as most of the band's experimentalism is consolidated within its seven-minute span, but album closer "Space Truckin'" does seem a little half-assed. The song is a disappointment if only because its music & words forge an uneasy truce between bleating R&B and semi-serious sci-fi. It is no less dignified than Robert Plant's Tolkien-inspired flights of lyrical fancy, but somehow sillier because it comes off as a half-measure. Had Ian Gillan gone all in with the theme - instead of occupying a kind of fatuous middle distance between ramblin' blues rumble and Lost in Space-level lyrics - it might have been far more successful. Plenty of prog-rock bands at that time were exploring the outer reaches of the universe, so it doesn't strike me as unreasonable to take Deep Purple to task for goofing about. Think about it: when you're in China, eating the local cuisine, you no longer call it "Chinese food." And when you're a real space trucker, you'd probably drop the adjectival qualifier on that phrase, too, wouldn't you? Grade: B
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