Billy Gibbons- 'Hardware"

 

For the third time, as a solo artist Billy Gibbons. ZZ TOP axe man, lay down some serious blues, hard rockin stuff, in the vein of the early ZZ TOP work. The opener "My lucky card" has a touch of 'Tush" at the riff department. His third solo work is somewhere between the more funny oriented first and the blues driven second. He infuses some "Eliminator" elements in songs like "S-G-L-M-B-B-R"  and 'More, more,more" or the fun, tex mex element at the cover of 'Hey baby,Que paso" (Texas Tornado), "Shakin bones" with Larkin Poe and 'West Coast Junkie". Then you have 'I was a highway" is the stand out track of the album. A song for fans of pure Texas blues rock, with some hard rock elements and the Rio Grande tradition, Gibbons with the help of Matt Sorum (drums), Austin Hanks (guitars) delivers the goods. 

 

 

 

An album full of variety, from the rockin "Shes on fire", the more bluesy 'Vagabond man"with the discreet organ fill and the desert/stoner "Desert high", Gibbons make everything seems in the right order and sonically creates a mosaic where every piece brings its own color and shape. Being far out of the box he introduces us to a rock album equally traditional as modern , where his guitar licks and vocal lines create an atmospheric and teasing result. Until the next ZZ TOP album this is more than an adequate substitute.

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