There’s too much spice in ZZ Top to consider them a bland whitewashing of the blues — they’re more a refraction of it, the end result of some cosmic idea that John Lee Hooker and Jimi Hendrix were the formative yin-yang of its post-psychedelic incarnation. Their Texas is its own weird space in itself, too, populated as it is by mythical brothels (“La Grange”), bizarre rituals of death-defying hot-rod stunts (“Master of Sparks”), and the strains of some miraculous Midwest-to-Delta connections happening just a ways East (“Jesus Just Left Chicago”). Do they wail? Hell yes, they do; Billy Gibbons’ dual-wielding acrobatic drawls (one’s his voice, the other’s his guitar) see to that. But it’s the Dusty Hill/Frank Beard groove, so tight that mechanizing it would be inevitable in the ’80s, that makes the motor run its finest. On “Waitin’ for the Bus” and “Shiek” they might as well be a three-man Hi Records session band for all their liquid-metal slipperiness and funky pocket-riding. Cop the original mix if you can; the post-Eliminator remixes are total lily-gildings.

– Nate Patrin