ZZ Top has finally released their 15 th album, La Futura, produced by the eccentric Rick Rubin along with Billy Gibbons. The band s first album in nine years, Las Futura has been recorded for over a year, the release being delayed by the slow moving Rubin getting the album mastered. Was it worth the wait? Similarly, Dwight Yoakam just released his 12 th album, and his first in five years. Dwight produced the album himself, with some help from Beck, Kid Rock, Ashley Monroe and Dwight s iphone. Beck and Dwight? It s better than you might think. Canadian band The Sheepdogs has released their first major label full length album since winning Rolling Stone magazine s 2011 contest to feature an unsigned band on the cover. Produced by Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney, and recorded in Nashville, the album is an improvement over the band s independently released albums, which were not bad at all. ZZ Top La Futura There was talk a few years ago of ZZ Top recording an album with the Black Keys, but they wound up working with Rick Rubin instead, hoping to capture some of the magic that Rubin has drawn out of Tom Petty and Johnny Cash. Rubin s production style is more hands off these days, however, and his biggest push was for ZZ Top to simply
enjoy themselves, and it sounds as if they did. While La Futura is based in ZZ Top s blues roots, it sounds closer to their 1990 s albums Rhytmeen and XXX than it does their classic 1970 s albums. This isn t a bad thing, those two are very good albums, but some fans were disappointed in them, expecting more poppy hooks, synthesizers and drum machines that the band had huge success with in the 1980 s. Rubin s snailpaced work ethic resulted in the band releasing an EP of four of La Futura s songs on itunes three months ahead of the full album, and this tactic seems to have worked well, as there has been a lot of buzz about this album. The first single off of La Futura is I Gotsta Get Paid, a gritty blues-rocking cover of Houston rapper DJ DMD s 25 Lighters, which references the practice of drug dealers using plastic lighters to house and disguise crack and powdered cocaine. Since the underground success of the rap song, the term 25 lighters has been applied to just about anything that a hustler wants to sell quickly in order to make some fast money. The grittiness continues throughout the album, with Billy Gibbons gruff vocals complementing his raw guitar tone, which is most effective on It's Too Easy Mañana and Have A Little Mercy. Both songs change tempo at the end, and possibly the best riff on the entire album is the last 30 seconds of Mañana. They really should have written a song based on the riff, it sounds like an entirely new song when it begins, but it s just a short jam that the song fades out with. It would have been much better than recycling the riff to Tush on the songs Chartreuse and Consumption, which incidentally, are back to back on the album. What were they thinking? Both of these songs are good, despite the Tush rip-off riffs, which these songs could have easily done without, as the Tush riff doesn t last the entire song on either. Consumption, in particular, finds Gibbons soloing with his signature tone intact, but sounding fresh and inspired. Gibbons guitar playing is the star of the show on this album, and that s a good thing. Flyin High has a basic AC/DC-ish riff, which adds something a little different into the mix, and it also refers to the classic ZZ Top song I m Bad, I m Nation Wide. Flyin High was premiered in space in June of 2011, on board of a Soyuz spacecraft by astronaut Mike Fossum, a big ZZ Top fan. Have A Little Mercy is my
favorite song on the album. It shuffles along at mid-tempo, until it switches gears into trademark blues for the final 30 seconds, finishing off the standard album gracefully. The Best Buy version of the CD is worth seeking out, as it includes two excellent bonus tracks, one of which Dusty Hill sings (otherwise, he sings backup vocals periodically on La Futura). While it s great to have a new ZZ Top album, I can t help but wonder what they would have come up with if they had worked with The Black Keys. Everything they have worked on the last couple of years has been great, and better than La Futura. Dwight Yoakam 3 Pears Dwight Yoakam returns to the Warner Brothers label after leaving twelve years ago, and he was given full artistic control over his excellent new album, 3 Pears. Yoakam has always dodged trends, returning to record in California after being rejected in Nashville in the mid-80 s for not being marketable, because they thought his music was too retro and outdated. 3 Pears has the rockabilly and honky tonk aspects that Yoakam became known for, but it also has songs that are more difficult to classify, falling closer to Americana than modern Country music. I don t care how it s classified, the bottom line is that it s great. This may be Dwight Yoakam s most solid album, and he s made a bunch of good ones.
Dwight says that he never set out to take so long to record 3 Pears, but the lengthy time did allow him to collaborate with some friends. Kid Rock helped him finish writing a 19 year old song, Beck produced two of the songs (one of which is the most traditional Country-sounding on the album), and Ashley Monroe co-wrote a ballad that is earthy, despite including a string section, which, ironically, was conducted by Beck s dad. Dwight wrote the rest of the album himself, except for Joe Maphis mid-50 s hit Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (an obvious influence on Dwight s Guitars, Cadillacs from his first album). One song, Waterfall, is primarily some silly lyrics that Dwight made up spontaneously while showing his girlfriend an old guitar of his. They recorded it on an iphone, which became the demo recording, and Dwight added some more serious lyrics to counter-balance the lighthearted ones, and it worked out well. Dwight has been known to play guitar live, but never on his recordings. On 3 Pears, however, he plays on every song. This was a good move that I hope Dwight continues in the future, and he has said that he is already looking forward to recording another album. The Target version of the CD has two bonus cover songs: Johnny Cash s Ring Of Fire (a different version from Dwight s older cover) and The Bee Gee s To Love Somebody, which is great, except for some annoying extra backing vocals. The same backing singers are surprisingly effective when they sing backup at the parts of the song that had backing vocals originally, however.
The Sheepdogs The Sheepdogs The Sheepdogs are a great band with a not so great name. I guess that it applies to the band s 70 s rock band hairy appearance. Weak name aside, The Sheepdogs are a hard working band that has drawn favorable comparisons to fellow Canadian band The Guess Who. There are certainly similarities in their music, but The Sheepdogs are no Guess Who rip-off band, they are fresh and original, though their influences are obvious. The band met The Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney at Petty Fest, a Tom Petty tribute festival in New York, and Carney asked about the details concerning the recording of The Sheepdogs major label debut album, and enthusiastically offered suggestions. Carney wound up producing the album, which was recorded in two weeks in Nashville, TN. Carney didn t help write any of the songs, but he did help the band stay focused, and his influence is undeniable, resulting in the best Sheepdogs album yet, and one of the best rock albums of 2012. The Sheepdogs album is 14 songs long, surprisingly good and very consistent throughout. The band is tighter than ever, and the songwriting is the strongest that it s ever been. Patrick Carney s influence is most evident on Feeling Good and The Way It Is, two songs that would have easily fit on the last two Black Keys albums, which is high praise, as I consider these to be two of the best albums in the last ten years. The album has a great stylistic mix, including some great Allman Brothers-style twin guitar
soloing in the instrumental Javelina!, something most current bands won t attempt. There is a shorter version of How Late, How Long, originally from the Five Easy Pieces EP, but the rest are all new songs. Like The Black Keys El Camino album, none of the songs on The Sheepdogs are very long, most are around three minutes or less, with only two exceeding four minutes, and just barely at that. The shorter song lengths are probably due to Carney s influence as well. The album flows very well and never overstays it s welcome. The Sheepdogs will be playing in Memphis at Minglewood Hall on Friday, September 28.