In recent years, ZZ Top has been following a disconcerting
\nmusical path. Either they have released an album that is
\nincredible, or they have released an album that is unlistenable.
\nMiddle ground? There hasn’t been much. The one constant is that ZZ
\nTop’s sales have not been matching the glory days of
\nEliminator<\/i> and
\nAfterburner<\/i> – which is a shame. Their 1996 album
\nRhythmeen<\/i> barely made a blip on the sales radar, but I
\nthought that album was a major step forward for that little ol’
\nband from Texas.<\/p>\n
Now comes
\nXXX<\/i>, their first album in three years (and third for RCA).
\nUnfortunately, with only a few exceptions, this disc hardly
\nsuggests that the band is on a serious comeback trail, and might
\neven be worse than
\nAntenna<\/i>, which sounded like the band was wandering around
\nwithout a musical roadmap.<\/p>\n
The trio of guitarist Billy Gibbons, bassist Dusty Hill and
\ndrummer Frank Beard have stripped down ther sound (something
\nthey’ve kind of been doing since the days of
\nAntenna<\/i>) to the point where they sound like they’re
\nrecording live without overdubs. The problem is that this leaves
\nmany of the tracks sounding naked and undeveloped; cuts like “Made
\nInto A Movie” and “Trippin'” are songs that could have easily
\nbenefitted from a litle overdubbing of guitar parts.<\/p>\n
Musically, ZZ Top is hurting. Their once
\ncutesy-but-risqu\u00e9 song titles like “Tube Snake Boogie” had
\ntheir time, but these days, tracks like “Poke Chop Sandwich” and
\n“Crucifixx-A-Flat” are as stale as last week’s donuts. It’s almost
\nas if ZZ Top forgot the magic words that turned earlier songs like
\nthese into enjoyable numbers. And the sexual asides as on
\n“36-22-36” were cute once, but now it just sounds like three dirty
\nold men dreaming of what once was.<\/p>\n
This isn’t to say that
\nXXX<\/i> is a complete failure. Tracks like “Beatbox” restore
\nsome faith in me that ZZ Top still has the power to make a decent
\nsong that infects your soul with its groove. “Dreadmon Boogoloo”
\ncomes close, but an instrumental from these guys? Admittedly,
\nGibbons and Hill’s vocals are not as solid as they once were, but
\nthis isn’t the thing I would have expected from them.<\/p>\n
The album finally starts to come together on the four tracks
\nwhich were recorded live (or at least they sound like they were; my
\nadvance copy has no liner notes, so I’ll assume the crowd noise
\nwasn’t just faded in). “Sinpusher” sounds a lot like “Pincushion”
\nfrom
\nAntenna<\/i> – and it’s been some years since I listened to that
\nalbum, so I’ll admit a bit of ignorance here. Their take on “(Let
\nMe Be Your) Teddy Bear” is much more sinister than the version
\nElvis Presley made famous, but is interesting nonetheless.
\nLikewise, “Hey Mr. Millionaire” and, to a lesser extent, “Belt
\nBuckle,” show the live power that ZZ Top has. (Surprisingly, this
\nis the first time on record that ZZ Top has succeeded with the live
\nsetting; I thought the live set from
\nFandango<\/i> was terrible.)<\/p>\n
\nXXX<\/i> is not the breakthrough album that ZZ Top had hoped for
\n– hell, in some cases, this album serves as a suggestion that it
\nmight be time for these guys to hang it up. But there is enough of
\na spark to let you know that these guys are still alive – even if
\nthis album is mostly needing intensive care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5723],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-36307","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-zz-top","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36307"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36307"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}