Among the various solo careers spawned by the immediate and greater Deep Purple family, Roger Glover is a bit of an outlier. His first solo album, Elements (1978), defiantly threw out the guitar-bass-drums ethic that defined his entire career and musician and producer, as well as standard song structure. Little did he realize he would soon be brought into the orbit of Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, serving as bassist and producer for the guy who fired him about five years earlier.
The Mask bookends the Rainbow experience and couldn't be more different from Elements. Somehow he managed to find a little time to borrow Rainbow's final rhythm section and a few friends to record an album on the eve of Deep Purple's Perfect Strangers and Rainbow's Bent Out of Shape, all of them Glover productions. Not only does it follow a conventional structure and instrumentation, but it also features Roger himself on vocals. Aside from maybe a stray Purple outtake (and I think once on stage when Gillan took ill), the last time he fronted a band was in Episode Six, and that was just one voice among six. Even though they were to remain colleagues, you can almost hear the relief in the music of getting away from the commercial metal of Rainbow and any kind of vocal acrobatics from Gillan to Joe Lynn Turner. It is also devoid of classical influences that colored the music of Blackmore and Lord, while also avoid the raunchy blues of David Coverdale and friends. It's definitely the softer side of Purple, but still enough heft to keep fans interested, especially those who like 1980's era Deep Purple.
For being such a different album, this was packaged on the same disc as Elements. Thanks to the power of iTunes I was able to surgically separate them back into the original albums. At the time I heard it was on the verge of going out of print, though I think over the years there have been proper reissues, so if that's the case, go check it out!
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