Throughout their 50-year career, Deep Purple has consistently recorded together live, in the same room, and crafted original material out of jam sessions. That is, until now. The pandemic, much like with the rest of the world, forced the band into unexpected downtime. This delayed the debut of their previous album Whoosh! — finally released August 2020 — and postponed the subsequent tour. Isolated and with nothing else to do, they decided, at the behest of producer Bob Ezrin, to upend their decades-long modus operandi and embrace the unexpected. And so, two things immediately set Deep Purple’s latest album, Turning to Crime, apart from anything they’ve done in the past: It’s an album of cover songs, and the band members recorded it independently of one another. And it works. Smashingly. Turning to Crime is a surprisingly brilliant, peek-behind-the-curtain look at the music that influenced them in their youth. But more than that, it really puts the spotlight on two things. Fi