For those unaware, and still requisite with a strong tailwind from last year’s chart leading album Whoosh!, Deep Purple surprises with new album Turning To Crime (earMUSIC) on November 26th, 2021 produced by Bob Ezrin.

Turning To Crime arrives only 15 months after Whoosh! – Deep Purple’s 21st studio album, which received acclaim by critics who praised the creative strength of a band that continues evolving with every release, and prestigious chart achievements (3rd consecutive #1 in Germany, #4 in the UK, and topped the US Independent Album and Hard Music Albums charts).

1) 7 And 7 Is
2) Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu
3) Oh Well
4) Jenny Take A Ride!
5) Watching The River Flow
6) Let The Good Times Roll
7) Dixie Chicken
8) Shapes Of Things
9) The Battle Of New Orleans
10) Lucifer
11) White Room
12) Caught In The Act [Medley: Going Down /Green Onions / Hot ‘Lanta /Dazed and Confused / Gimme Some Lovin’]

This new release, which is also Deep Purple’s first album of tracks that weren’t written by the band and thus are a collection of songs previously recorded by other artists, opens on the amped proto-punk of the first single, Arthur Lee and Love’s 7 And 7 Is and then the joyous blues of Huey “Piano” Smith’s Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu and never looks back thereafter.

Up next is one of the early crossovers between blues rock and heavy metal, their version of the call and response vocalized melodies of Fleetwood Mac’s Oh Well, the gritty thunder of Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels’ Jenny Take A Ride! and both the laid back rhythm’s of Bob Dylan’s Watching The River Flow and the finger-snapping roll of Ray Charles & Quincy Jones’s Let The Good Times Roll, with one of my own personal favorites from the album, the piano-led, Southern-grilled Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken backing those up nicely.

A stormingly energetic rendition of The Yardbirds’s Shapes Of Things is along next and is followed seamlessly by the gently fervent thigh slapper The Battle Of New Orleans (Lonnie Donegan/Johnny Horton), a magnificently rock raucous cover of Bob Seger System’s Lucifer, the album rounding out on a resoundingly precise rendition of Cream’s White Room, closing on the jam fest that is Caught In The Act; which is primarily a medley that more than adequately comprises: Going Down (Freddie King) / Green Onions (Booker T. and the M.G.’s) / Hot ‘Lanta (The Allman Brothers Band) / Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin) / Gimme Some Lovin’ (The Spencer Davis Group).

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