ZZ Chops

Those ZZ boys sure do love their fancy foreign language LP names, Deguello, Tres Hombres, Tejas, Fandango, Mescalero, El Loco, El Iminator … so it was no surprise when 2012’s album hit the racks that it was called La Futura.

Funny, I still think of La Futura as the ‘new’ ZZ Top album.  It was a definite new start for them though, they had dwindled artistically, drastically for about 20 years, sure there was the odd good track here and there but they were only a band anyone paid any attention to for their past triumphs, rather than any hope of new peaks*.   Somewhere down the tracks the blooze boogie band with the cartoon image had become the cartoon band with the blooze boogie image.  Time for rebalancing, some creativity.

ZZ Top opted for the time-honoured reboot route of making an album with Rick Rubin, which isn’t always a guarantee of success but worked handsomely here; he reminded HIll, Beard and Gibbons that overall they were a band, not a corporation and they responded.  Whilst La Futura doesn’t swing with the heavyweights in their canon, it can certainly brawl some.

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La Futura hit the racks in September 2012 and I was a first day buyer**.  I was absolutely cranked on enthusiasm for the opening track, ‘I Gotsta Get Paid’ which is comfortably up in the ZZ Top 5 for me.  It just encapsulated everything great about the band, it was crunchy, rootsy and dusty (Dusty?) sounding but with a kick of some tech in there that kept everything fresh and new.  I played it nine galactozillion times in a week and I still love every second of it.

Interestingly the basis of the track is a 1998 Texan hip hop track ’25 Lighters’^, played by some guys ZZ Top met and befriended down the studio via their engineer.  A ‘lighter’ in Houston (and rural South Welsh) slang is a Bic lighter that has had its’ works stripped out and replaced with crack cocaine^^.  Genius and the hotrods were back:

(I do rather worry about the lady at 1:02, despite demonstrably having passed through puberty, she appears to have failed to acquire even the most rudimentary drinking skills.  I would imagine she has to live with a full-time nursing assistant to ensure she remains hydrated).

But I digress, the basic boogie of ‘Chartreuse’ an ode to the divine French green is just balm for the ears, as is the heavier ‘Consumption’, which one assumes is a Texan boogie rock paean to tuberculosis.  Both tracks do exactly what they should and it is so great to hear some retro Top stylings with no gimmicks.  Beard, Hill and Gibbons really do sound like a real cool garage band jamming it out in a studio again, showing off their chops for the sheer hell of it all.

Then La Futura gets all soppy sloppy and cry-y why-y on us with the next two tracks ‘Over you’ and ‘Heartache In Blue’.  The former dials in on some of the magic Rio Grande Mud that molded the divine ‘Sure Got Cold After The Rain Fell’ and features a beautifully judged Gibbons solo, the latter blues-y woozy bogies it on home.  It’s nice to touch some real emotion after 20 years plus of over-produced robo funk rock.

La Futura then deals us a great song in the person of ‘I Don’t Wanna Lose, Lose You’ which when the wind is blowing a certain way can be my fave track here.  It just sounds so vital and in your face, everyone playing off each other, sounding so REAL – the way it hasn’t since the boys closed out the coda on ‘I Need You Tonight’ (under very different circumstances) 29 years before.

For the sake of critical balance I will state for the record that ‘Flyin’ High’ is shite, just so you don’t think I’m a corporate shill for American Recordings.  The band sound utterly imprisoned in a cage formed by an odd rhythm section offcut from Highway To Hell – possibly one of the ones I don’t like such as ‘Get It Hot – it takes all the swing and danger out of their bass and is the one track here where they don’t sound true to themselves.

Retrieving a little lost soul from the proceedings is ZZ’s cover of David Rawlings and Gillian Welch’s ‘It’s Too easy’, to which they tag on a spare Mañana.  Rawlings and Welch just bleed class and feeling in all they do^* and the ZZ boys ride that resigned cool feeling on home.  It’s a real triumph.  As is closer, ‘Have Mercy’ which really does feel like something thrown together in the studio, brilliantly, positively, feelingly so.  They’re still ‘Waitin’ For That Bus’ 29 years on, mercy indeed.

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La Futura was just the LP I hoped it would be when I bought it, how wonderful is that? how seldom that ever happens for big beast bands from the 1970’s.  Mr Rubin really deserves big props for everything he did here, for recreating the uncomplicated sound of three great goofy guys jamming together in a wood-panelled room and sounding like they were really enjoying it too.  My hopes that this would spark the start of a quickfire new golden age of Top are sadly unfounded 8 years on.  Ah well.

Maybe it was just enough to hear them happy and human one more time.

1012 Down.

*I’m cheating for narrative reasons here, I do like 1994’s Antenna.  And, hey, it was released on vinyl.  How about a trio of rereleases for Mescalero, XXX and Rhythmeen fellas?

**La Futura was trailed by a 4-track EP released solely on iTunes called Texicali, featuring the first 4 tracks from the LP.  I bought it of course but I still think it was a damnably cheap shot not to give us anything that wasn’t going to be on the album.  Ho-hum, not a band to ever give much extra away at all, not even a demo or a different mix.

^I had never heard this until today.  It’s awful, soft-edged hip-hop, kinda like Warren G eating mushy baby food for a month straight before gently squeezing it into your ear with a piping bag.  Yuk! I had hoped and assumed it would be harder, sweatier and angrier, like I love my rap to be.

^^1537: Just like Wikipedia, but more informative and I don’t hassle you to donate the price of a cup of coffee to me every 7 minutes.

^*’Time (The Revelator)’ may actually be my favourite song ever, occasionally.  They both play amazingly well but he may just edge ahead into my ZZ Top 8 guitarists ever, he just doesn’t sound like anyne else, ever.