TURNING TO CRIME

I even could not expect this to be so good. To me, 'cover album' is almost synonymic to 'rubbish'. But this one is just slightly below top and far beyond expectations. Of course this release has no direct relation to prog, but it shouldn't at all. I consider this a sort of farewell bow to the era when those five old guys started to make music, and to the songs they educated on. And the band did this work on highest possible level. The songs themselves are mostly rock'n'rollish, lightminded and unpretentious (not surprisingly, as there was no prog in the 1960s yet). But Deep Purple's interpretations are quite proggy. The original versions of those old songs were composed, arranged and especially performed on the border of (as we say in Russia) samodeyatelnost (amateur performance). But Deep Purple played and sang them as professionally as only Deep Purple are capable. Airey played virtuoso piano solos, Morse played virtuoso guitar passages, Paice played drums as if he was still 25 years old, Glover was up to the mark as usual... and Gillan's voice surprisingly got younger (just compare to Whoosh!). The result is a really noble album based on the material which initially was far from nobility. Not really progressive? OK I agree. But in this case - no matter.