If Life Was Easy

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As a longtime member of one of the groups that helped create heavy metal (Deep Purple, for the uninitiated), it's understandable to expect a solo outing by bassist Roger Glover to be geared toward headbangers. But as evidenced by his fifth solo album overall, 2011's If Life Was Easy, Glover has opted to follow a bluesier, roots rocky path. Which is understandable, because the whole point of doing a solo album should be to step out from under Purple's high-decibel shadow. As a case in point, a pair of tunes feature Glover's daughter Gillian Glover on vocals: "Set Your Imagination Free" and "Get Away (Can't Let You)," with the former falling in "ballad" category while the latter is a blues-rocker with blaring horn work. And the blues can be detected at various other points on If Life Was Easy, especially the guitar work throughout "Stand Together" and the Bo Diddley-esque album opener, "The Dream I Had," which features the unmistakable vocals of Nazareth's Dan McCafferty. And Glover succeeds in keeping listeners on their toes throughout, by including a tune that sounds like a more coherent Skip Spence a la his cult classic Oar album ("When Life Gets to the Bone") and a tune ("Cruel World") that contains some unmistakably Middle Eastern sounds, thanks to the presence of a sitar. In fact, there is really only a single tune on the album that could be classified as "Deep Purple-esque," and that's the rockin' album closer, "Feel Like a King." Despite being the longtime "man in the back" for Deep Purple, on If Life Was Easy Roger Glover shows that he has much more to offer than just laying down bass grooves. ~ Greg Prato