Billy Gibbons And Th PERFECTAMUNDO (LP)

ZZ Top's 2012 album La Futura -- their first in nearly a decade -- was widely acclaimed for bringing back the group's grimy '70s boogie, so what did Billy Gibbons choose to do for a follow-up? Naturally, he decided to leave his little old band behind so he could record Perfectamundo with a new group called the BFG's. Perfectamundo allows Gibbons to not only indulge a newfound love of Cuban rhythms -- an infatuation assisted by pianist Martin Guigui, who provides an anchor in the BFG's -- but also all the studio trickery he left behind as he worked with Rick Rubin on La Futura. Certainly, percolating Cuban rhythms lie at the foundation of Perfectamundo, but Gibbons can't resist setting everything to tightly controlled drum machines, then hauling out a bunch of studio effects, including a vocoder that pushes his gravelly croak into something slippery and sly. All this flair is a welcome reminder that, for all his vaunted blues purism, Gibbons remains something of a futurist, happily blur