****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
To me, the best cover songs are one where the band digs up an obscure but great song that hasn't already been covered by a million other bands, and/or can take a song and make it sound like their own. Overall, Deep Purple succeeds at both on their newest album, "Turning to Crime".I've seen a number of pseudo-intellectual "fans" under the delusion that there's something shameful about doing cover songs. Such whiners are obviously ignorant of the centuries-old practice of having composers and performers being typically different people, whether it's opera, orchestras, jazz bands performing jazz standards, and so on. Never mind the fact that Deep Purple had success with "Hush", then soon after "Kentucky Woman". So if you're one of those miserable people, I doubt a new album of originals would please you anyway.Still, the band has fun with this concept of "stealing" other people's music, hence the album title. This is further carried out in the hilarious music video for "Oh Well" (where they mug a band for their instruments, chase down Bob Dylan and steal his lyric book, etc.), and the fake police reports in the liner notes. Not that the aforementioned humorless people would get the joke, of course.So on to the album itself. It starts with the high-paced "7 And 7 Is". I always liked Alice Cooper's punk cover of this same song, but Deep Purple makes it sound like of their own. "Rockin' Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu" is simply a fun, whimsical, old timey rock 'n roll song, and gets stuck in my head the most. You hear more of that old rock 'n roll on some other tracks, like "Jenny Take A Ride". Don Airey has a lot of fun on these, even throwing in quick riffs like "Smoke on the Water" and "Runaway". The vibe of these sorts of tracks almost kind of harkens back to their own stage jams they'd do back in the 70s with songs like "Lucille". Ray Charles' "Let The Good Times Roll" throws in some brass.Their rendition of "Oh Well" threw me off at first, as Gillan doesn't sing the lines in the high-paced, sixteenth note way of the original. Instead, he takes his time singing each of the few lines in a really slow, soulful way. Again, it threw me off at first, but it's really grown on me upon multiple listens. They similarly cover some other songs of their 1960s contemporaries like The Yardbirds ("Shapes Of Things", and a bit of "Dazed and Confused" in the closing medley track, "Caught In The Act"), Cream ("White Room"), Spencer Davis Group ("Gimme Some Lovin'", as part of the closing medley track). I'm sure Little Feat's "Dixie Chicken" was picked by Steve Morse.All in all, this album should be taken for what it is: a band who has been making music for over half a century, taking a break to have fun covering songs from their influences.
