NEW ALBUMS
BILLYF GIBBONS
Hardware CONCORD 7/10
ZZ Top frontman returns to familiar ground on third solo LP. By Andrew Mueller
Funky Gibbons: the ZZ Top guy goes back to boogie
BLAIN CLAUSEN
IF, at any point during the recent crisis, you found yourself thinking, ‘What would Billy Gibbons do?’ – and there are probably worse role models – you might have pictured the ZZ Top frontman lighting out for some cactus-pocked desert redoubt in one of his garageful of hot rods. A scarlet coupe, perhaps, flames painted along the bonnet, packed with some of Gibbons’ legendarily vast guitar collection, and sufficient provisions to ride out lockdown.
You wouldn’t have been too far wrong. Hardware was recorded in the rocky mesas of California’s Mojave, Gibbons teaming up with drummer Matt Sorum (Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver, The Cult) and guitarist Austin Hanks; Rebecca and Megan Lovell of Larkin Poe contribute backing vocals. The single “West Coast Junkie” (“I’m a West Coast junkie from a Texas town/And when I get to Cali it’s going down”) serves, in this context, as a Southern surf-rock mission statement, Gibbons channelling Dick Dale over a pulsing go-go beat, the drums quoting The Surfari’s “Wipeout” before the guitar solo.