Hailing from County Dublin and now based in Greystones, County Wicklow, Irish songwriter Garrett Anthony Rice edges further into focus with ‘Purple Man (For Jimi)’, a track that feels less like a tribute and more like a transmission. As the lead glimpse of his forthcoming double album ‘EQUINOX’, it arrives with the quiet confidence of an artist who knows exactly where he’s placing his feet.
Built around a circling, slightly overdriven guitar motif, ‘Purple Man (For Jimi)’ thrives on tension rather than theatrics. The riff doesn’t so much explode as it coils, creating a steady propulsion that carries Rice’s vocal, cool, unforced, edged with grit but never straining for effect.
The Hendrix nod is explicit in the title, but the influence of Jimi Hendrix is absorbed rather than paraded. Instead of chasing psychedelia or virtuosic excess, Rice taps into something subtler, feel over flourish, groove over grandstanding. The looseness in the drums and the slight swing in the guitar phrasing hint at that lineage without ever slipping into pastiche. It’s reverence translated into instinct.
As an entry point into ‘EQUINOX’, an 18-track double album carved down from more than 30 demos, the single suggests scale without sounding bloated. There’s an admirable patience to the arrangement; verses are allowed to breathe, the chorus lands with earned weight, and nothing feels over-polished. That sense of deliberation extends to the project’s wider ambition: a second release presented as a full double LP is a bold move, but ‘Purple Man (For Jimi)’ makes a case for Rice as a long-form thinker rather than a singles-chaser.
‘Purple Man (For Jimi)’ doesn’t shout about its intentions. Instead, it moves with steady conviction, grounded in rock’s lineage yet uninterested in nostalgia for its own sake. If this is the tone-setter for EQUINOX, Garrett Anthony Rice isn’t simply looking backward at his heroes, he’s building something durable in their wake.