Artist:     Billy F. Gibbons

Album:     Hardware

Label:     Concord Records

Release Date:     6.4.21

89

BUY DIGITAL

BUY PHYSICAL

All the tools Billy F. Gibbons needed for the rampaging Hardware were readily available. A heady brew of thick, growling blues-rock, nasty metallic groove, surf noir and hot desert wind and atmosphere, the ZZ Top leading man’s driving third solo album was hammered and bolted together by a skilled crew of journeymen, who go to sleep only after a nighttime visit to a sweat lodge of inky, swirling surrealism and fevered languor with the sparse closer “Desert High.”

Propelled by rugged drummer Matt Sorum, of Guns ‘N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver fame, and Austin Hanks’ guitar wrangling, Hardware was produced by Gibbons, Sorum and Mike Fiorentino. Engineer Chad Shlosser also assisted with the delivery, helping to amplify the vice-ridden, philosophical storytelling of Gibbons and his gruff, occasionally distorted vocals, as well as the powerful energy bubbling up from such potent tracks as the fast-moving “She’s on Fire.”

Ready to blow at any minute, the volcanic Hardware often sounds enormous, especially when Gibbons and company stomp all over the expansive and radiant “More-More-More” and Larkin Poe fills out the guttural, rumbling “Stackin’ Bones” – a song glorifying gambling and hustling – with angelic background singing that has “born to lose” as a tramp stamp. They wrestle with the simple, irresistible riff twists of the dark, gnarly opener “My Lucky Card” and get pulled into the sleazy, low-down boogie of “Shuffle, Step & Slide,” with the seedy, psychedelic garage-rock of “West Coast Junkie” haunted by Link Wray and its own demons.

All originals, except for a sunbaked, charmingly roguish remake of “Hey Baby, Que Paso,” recorded before by Augie Meyer and then the Texas Tornados, the set also makes room for the lonely, bluesy ballad “Vagabond Man” and a sensual, stripped-down “Spanish Fly.” Otherwise, as the successor to 2018’s award-winning The Big Bad Blues, Hardware is big and bold. Undoubtedly, it’s Gibbons’ heaviest record, full of lust and greed and satisfying guitar parts awash in that dirty, chromatic tone he made famous. Gibbons is still living large.

—Peter Lindblad