ZZ Top: Tres Hombres : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Besides spawning two incredible albino rock & blues brothers and one late first lady of the boogie, Texas is becoming one hell of a place to say you're from. The whole Southern rock & roll sound seems to be catching on as fast as a swig of potato liquor reaching the brain.

ZZ Top makes no bones about being cowboys who used to be in the psychedelic music scene and who have recently discovered the joys of guzzling beer and driving their cars and bikes at 110 miles an hour. Tres Hombres is a definite step back to their white blues roots. Their second album, Rio Grand Mud, had an English feel in the production end with Rolling Stones-type tunes such as "Chevrolet" and the Brown Sugarish "Francene." ZZ Top have shown in all three of their recordings the dynamic rhythms that only the finest of the three-piece bands can cook up. Billy Gibbons plays a tasty Duane Allman lead with Dusty Hill and Frank Beard pounding out the funky bottom.

Tres Hombres was recorded with their live performances in mind. Minimal echo and lots of live-sounding jamming. "Waiting for the Bus" is a mean muddled track reminiscent of early Canned Heat complete with the usual repetitive three-chord lick. Vocally, ZZ have an advantage over most white rockers in that these Southerners sound black anyway with lines like ... "You don't have to worry, 'cause takin' care of business is his name"—sung by Gibbons in a drawl so thick he would do Leadbelly justice.

ZZ Top seem to be at least one of the most inventive of the three-piece rockers but they are only one of several competent Southern rocking bands. I do wonder when the audiences will get tired of hearing the same ... "Poot yawl hans together" patter.