"RAW": the soundtrack behind ZZ Top's 2019 Netflix documentary

So, a return to ZZ’s roots. How many times has that line been peddled in connection to a ZZ Top album, only for us to find they’d forgotten to plug in their guitars and Billy Gibbons plays everything through his laptop?

Fortunately that is definitely not the ease with RAW, which soundtracks the 2019 Netflix documentary That Little Ol’Band From Texas, during which Gibbons (vocals/guitar), Dusty Hill (vocals/bass) and Frank Beard (drums) get together for a day in the Gruene Hall - the oldest continually run dance hall in Texas (it says here) - to record in the manner they did when they began their career. Sadly, since then Dusty Hill has departed for the great blues saloon in the sky and this album is dedicated to his memory. And what a send off it is, easily living up to its rootsy billing and injecting extra sonic hot sauce into some classic ZZ tunes.

It’s not quite perfect, but the collection is a thrilling listen nonetheless. With 12 songs stretching from 1971’s ZZ Top’s First Album up to 1983’s Eliminator, the only concessions to Gibbons’s reinvention of the ZZ sound are their computerized mega-hits Legs and Gimme All Your Lovin’.

Otherwise this is pure early ZZ Top, kicking off with an intoxicating Brown Sugar and closing with an absolutely belting Tube Snake Boogie, with every album getting a look in other than 1976’s puzzlingly underrated Tejas. Examining the track list more closely, the key career-defining Tres Hombres is only allowed La Grange (what, no Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers?), while Fandango! gets four cuts: Tush, Blue Jean Blues, Heard It On The X and a rather slow Thunderbird. The last of those could easily have been replaced by a Tejas deep cut such as Ten Dollar Man (with Hill on vocals) or El Diablo.

Quibbles about song selection aside, the rest is almost total triumph, the most astonishing aspect being the primal monster sound. Gibbons’s guitar tone is as thick and dirty-sweet as molasses and fierier than 125-proof moonshine, while Hill lays down a righteously full and fat bass rumble and Beard’s drums groove and slam. How they mesh seamlessly on tracks such as Just Got Paid, Tush (which sounds like a wild drunken brawl), Certified Blues and the slinky I’m Bad, I'm Nationwide is a genuine delight. Ironically, without really trying, ZZ sound more soulful and vital here than they have for yonks.