Billy F Gibbons' new album: The Big Bad Blues

Like the bands he’s fronted for most of his adult life, Billy Gibbons isn’t afraid to throw a musical curve ball or two. ZZ Top’s remarkable leap from bar boogie blues to electronic-fuelled pop made them international superstars in 1983 with the release of the Eliminator album, then when Gibbons announced his first solo record in 2015 with the AfroCuban flavoured Perfectamundo and then performed at the Havana Jazz Festival, his shift in musical gears was another example of the Gibbons philosophy that some left turns just feel right.

There’s no mistaking the incarnation of Gibbons on The Big Bad Blues: dirty, boogie blues, gritty, down at heel and sometimes just plain mean. It’s a form that is rarely more keenly felt than in the hands of a man who hasn’t shown about two-thirds of his actual face publicly for about four decades.

And while ZZ Top seem to have forgotten where the studio is (although a 50th-anniversary tour and new music is planned for next year), he keeps his freak flag flying with this collection of bar jams and blues covers that is as flinty and steely edged as Gibbons himself.
The low-slung vocals sound like an out-take from sessions for La Grange, his guitar offsets his gruff vocal tone with a range of beautiful, high keening notes and we’re hitting the ground running. It’s an ecstatic celebration of blues and rock’n’roll. 
Which is not to undermine some of Gibbons’ new music: the slick-sounding drive of Hollywood 151 and the spacey Let The Left Hand Know…