The source of ZZ Top's appeal was never any secret to the beer drinkers and hell raisers who worshiped them the instant the band began to boogie fifteen years ago. Since then there have been classic stunts (the 1976 tour featuring livestock and snakes) and classic licks ("Tush" and "LaGrange"). But it took their last (and ninth) album, Eliminator, to turn the li'l' ol' trio from Texas into everybody's guilty pleasure.
Autobabn.
Top Top Billy Gibbons has sacrificed the chemistry – and, tragically, the heart – of the band to technology. The synthesizers and drum machines that helped modernize a Cream-vintage power trio and subtly reinforced Eliminator's tracks have now apparently replaced bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard. Gibbons' electronic toys may give him few arguments, note-for-note perfection and tremendous flexibility (for example, in reshuffling ZZ's traditional beat into radical syncopations like the wild intro to "Sleeping Bag"). But this is music that should feel as if it's being made by men, not machines.
Afterburner's fake drums sound thin, and the keyboards are just plain tacky. They frequently overwhelm material that is otherwise rather nice. "Rough Boy" (only the second ballad ZZ has ever recorded), swollen with inarticulate longing, might be more moving with a stripped-down arrangement. The same goes for "Stages," a more upbeat love song that's also a departure from ZZ's typically goofy lyrics and raunchy humor. Coming from a single man who's played one-night stands since his teens, "Stages, keep on changing/Stages, rearranging love" is a knowing assessment of romance on the run. Not only would the yucky synthesizers be better off piped into a shopping mall (or onto a Journey album), but Gibbons' bluesworn voice is so mechanically treated that its emotional impact is deadened.
He doesn't suffer as badly as Dusty Hill, though. One of the highlights of ZZ concerts is the way Gibbons and Hill almost finish one another's sentences; here Gibbons has kept all of the leads to himself. Hill, a great rave-and-shouter in the Little Richard tradition, makes two cameo appearances, on "Delirious" and "Can't Stop Rockin'." But he sounds distant and dispirited – as if Randy Bachman had telephoned in his vocals for him.
Amid all this machine-made music, "Velcro Fly" is strikingly alive. Not only does Gibbons' manic buzz constantly remind you of why he entered the guitar players' pantheon eons ago, but this is the rate cut where you hear something like the gut thump of a real bass, while the totally demented instrumental break sounds like Prince taking "My Sharona" and bouncing it off the walls. The l
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