ZZ Top have long been a prime candidate for a
Rick Rubin-led comeback, having long ago settled into an insular digital rut that paid back increasingly small dividends.
La Futura is that long-awaited
ZZ Top record, their first full-length in nearly a decade (the last was 2003's Mescalero) and, more remarkably, their first-ever album to bear a production credit by somebody who is neither
Billy Gibbons nor longtime manager
Bill Ham, who left the organization in 2006.
Gibbons sits at the mixing board with
Rubin and together they revive
the Top's dirty '70s boogie, never quite forgetting the coolly propulsive stylized rock of
Eliminator. Certainly,
La Futura is the best album from
ZZ Top since that '80s landmark but it flips
Eliminator on its head, using synthesized elements as accents, not as a skeleton.
Rubin returns real drums to
ZZ Top but doesn't entirely strip away drum machines, giving
La Futura just enough of a futuristic shimmer to live up to its name, just enough of the present to make it feel of the moment. And there's no mistaking that this lil' ol' band from Texas is indeed old -- and its age is part of the pleasure of
La Futura.
ZZ Top have the weathered interplay of vets who've been doing this for almost their entire lives and
Billy Gibbons' gravelly growl has now withered into a gnarly, strangled croak, almost primal in its ugliness. Far from hiding his ragged singing,
Gibbons and
Rubin have it battle the thick blasts of fuzz guitars throughout the whole of the album, noise that even splatters the slow 12-bar form of "Heartache in Blue." It's a thick, tactile sound that's invigorating -- the smack of
Frank Beard's snare is infectious -- and that alone would make
La Futura a success, but what makes it a triumph is the coolly efficient songwriting.
ZZ Top cleverly reference past glories without succumbing to recycling: "I Gotsta Get Paid" could have wallowed in the
Rio Grande Mud, "Chartreuse" boogies as relentlessly as "Tush," "Have a Little Mercy" winks at "Waitin' for the Bus," and they revive the arena rock of the '80s with "Flyin' High." What makes these songs really cook is how
ZZ Top are celebrating everything that they've taken for granted for decades -- they're embracing the sleazy boogie, the dirty jokes, the locomotive riffs, the saturated blues, the persistent lecherous leer, and by doing so they finally sound like themselves again. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine