Texicali restates the original ZZ Top legend (not so much arena rock as arena blues) even as it takes a few Texas-sized steps away from it.
The EP, seeing wide release on June 12, 2012, samples four songs from the band’s forthcoming collaboration with Rick Rubin — ZZ Top’s first new music in nine years. And in some ways, it’s like nothing has changed. For instance, “I Gotsta Get Paid,” with its gravel-road rooster tail of a riff and soar mash-swilling vocal, could have come from no other band — right down to Billy Gibbons’ stuttering guitar flourish just before his solo, which draws a straight line back to the slinky appeal of “Cheap Sunglasses.”
What’ll really knock you out: “Gotsta” is actually a reworking of a 1990s-era regional hip-hop hit out of Houston, Texas, called “25 Lighters.” Texicali ends in a similarly surprising fashion with “Over You,” a raw ballad. As Billy Gibbons’ voice creaks with very real emotion, the track builds toward this shambling, Otis Redding-informed sensuality — easily the most honest moment in memory for this band.
There’s a determined effort, it seems, to move past the Eliminator period’s missteps, to reclaim their direct, if unrefined 1970s feel. A decade later, “Over You” might have devolved into a gauzy synth-washed sheen. (I’m looking at you, “Rough Boy”). Similarly, “Gotsta” has a rattling, rocking menace that those furry-guitar flipping MTV-era guys never got close to. Instead, ZZ Top embraces everything that made them interesting in the first place, even while making small changes to keep it from sounding redundant or like they’re trying too hard.
Long-time fans will also be glad to hear that the trio’s roadhouse-rattling dedication to good times, and bad girls, remains in tact, as well: “Chartreuse” recalls the days of randy (hell, nasty) little numbers like “Pearl Necklace,” “Legs” and “Tube Snake Boogie” as Gibbons sings in a lip-smacking snarl: “That color just turns me loose … When you get the blues, baby, I got the juice.” (Listen closely at the beginning, and you might hear a whisper of “La Grange” there, too.)
If “Consumption” doesn’t really aspire to anything more than referencing the band’s best gassed-up groovers, you still have to admire how Rubin’s uncluttered production reanimates the unhinged, sleazy atmosphere that once made ZZ Top such a dangerous delight.
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