Zz Top - mescalero +Album Reviews

Great Music, Lousy CD

D. G. Devin | 02/02/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is the best ZZ Top CD for over a decade. The humour is there, the dirty fuzz sounds are there, the techno beats are not.

Worthy of more stars except the CD quality sucks. I at first thought it was just "volume maximised", ie. the recorded level is set way to high. But no, gross distortion has been introduced by deliberate digital hard limiting, the amount varying from track to track, presumably depending on how "gritty" they wanted each track to sound. The result is just bad sound. This is the worst mastered CD I have come across.

If they wanted a gritty sound, the correct way to do it is before/during mixing. Apply hard limiting to the guitar, not the whole damn thing. Yuk.

Avoid European copies - they have the added benefit of "copy protection" deliberately introduced data errors."

Finally on the right track

09/22/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I've been listening to the boys for 30 years and, I have to admit, they frustrated me with some of the material on Antenna and XXX. But Mescalero has a lot of harmonica and steel pedal guitar on it, getting back to a Texas Blues sound but mellower and slower than Rhythmeen. "Piece" has some pretty passages and a metal-sounding rhythm groove near the end. Billy Gibbons' Gretsch guitar sounds awesome on this whole recording, especially his leads. "Que Lastima" kind of grows on you. "What is it Kid" has a great bass line: go Dusty! "Tramp" takes an old blues progression and makes it sound positively innovative. I love that song;Billy alternates between his low-pitched speaking voice and a higher singing voice. The ending chord progression on Liquor is awesome, even though the song borrows the same fadeout technology the band used on "Loaded," it works. But don't change CD's just yet: the hidden track under #16 is really well done. I'm sure you'll know the song. All I can say is, you guys let me down for a long time, but this release is really good. I'm really happy with it."

Jimmy Reed on steroids!

09/17/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Almost 34 years after their Halloween 1969 debut, one might thing the boys from Texas were running low on inspiration. That is not the case. Mescalero is one of the best discs in the entire ZZ canon. From start to finish,each song is loaded with invention; this is the strongest start to finish on a ZZ Top disc since Eliminator, superior even to 1997's Rhythmeen. Billy Gibbons' guitar work is superb, but Dusty Hill's bass is active and thunderous, and Frank Beard's drumming is heavy yet nimble.
In terms of the individual tunes, "Tramp" is a hoot, with Billy's guitar tuned to a B, "Alley-Gator" is not really about an alligator,and "Buck Nekkid" is self-explanatory. Additionally, patient listeners get a wonderful treat at the end of "Liquor". Billy and his cohorts deliver a heartfelt, moving performance on the bonus tune.
Underneath the beards and funny suits, these three men are superb musicians with a firm handle on synthesizing exciting new music combining their R&B roots with all manner of new music and music technology."

ZZ Top back in the saddle

D. G. Devin | 09/15/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There are bands that rocked us especially well back when we were mere infants, cruising around in the hot, sulty night of our youth with the car windows rolled down and our libidos on overdrive. One such was ZZ Top, they were quirky what with that Texas thing happening, but at the same time they delivered pure, white-hot blues-rock with an intensity that three-piece bands seem especially good at. Their fat, boogie-drenched sound was in sharp contrast to the pretentious direction that some bands explored back then, and nobody could get the feet moving like the Top. I was tickled when they were reborn some year laters, taking the MTV world by storm with video-friendly songs that put the terrible trio back on top of the charts. Maybe the music wasn't quite as rootsy, but a new generation of kids seemed to like it, so why not.And then they got a little odder with each passing album, there are some really weird tunes on the past few Top albums, you just don't expect to hear Vincent Price mentioned in the lyrics of a song by a blues-rock band. The sound got deeper and murkier, layer upon layer of studio-processed sound that was clearly going to be tough to reproduce onstage. And they even reissued classic material with ill-advised studio massaging, excess reverb and such foolishness, most regrettable. The new albums were still enjoyable if you were a true Cactushead, they always had some catchy tunes in between the wonderful weirdness, but I could understand how someone just coming to ZZ Top could wonder what the hell was going on.Thus I am delighted at their new album, Mescalero. Not that it ain't still quirky, I don't think these guys will ever be able to leave humor out of their music, but they seem to be taking another run at the basics, grinding out the blues with a passion. And there are flashes of other music all through the album, acid-zydeco maybe (if there is such a thing), techno-country with a classic Nashville lyric shimmering through an odd phase-shifting studio effect, a heartbreak ballad dripping with steel guitar, and Tex-Mex squirting out all over, some songs even being sung in Spanish, and even a little rockabilly jazz. There's a take on the rap-predecessor R&B classic "Tramp," a song Buddy Guy tore up on his second-last album Sweet Tea, and there's even a (hidden track) song you heard first while watching the immortal movie Casablanca, if you can believe that.Mescalero contains a generous sixteen tracks, maybe not all as good as the best of them, "Me So Stupid" has so far failed to make the cut with me, and "Punk Ass Boyfriend" lavishes fiery guitar on an otherwise forgettable song. But others, like the first three -- "Mescalero," "Two Ways to Play" and "Alley-Gator" -- dang, that's as strong an opening as I've head on any album for some time. One oddity is some apparent bad-language editing on a track or three, as if RCA is afraid the mass-market retailers would demand a parental warning sticker due to the F-word sneaking into a rock lyric, strange, perhaps the album's release being delayed for long months has more of a story behind it than we've heard. ..."

ZZ TOP IS STILL ALIVE !

Ihsan Yavuzer | Istanbul, TURKEY | 06/26/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I became a ZZ TOP fan in 1984 with "Eliminator". Then I checked out their stuff in the 70's and I was even more interested. Billy Gibbons'guitar playing is very very cool and unic. Their music is good for hard rockers as well as Blues rockers. This is album is really good and it's nice to see that they are still alive. However I was expecting more 70's sound, since many groups are going back to their roots nowadays. I highly recommand this CD to all ZZ TOP fans and other rockers."

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	Zz Top mescalero Genres: Rock, Classic Rock, Metal
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