Album review: ZZ Top, Recycler (1990)

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, NOV. 29, 1990

By Steve Newton

Playing the rock critic game can be tough, especially when you have to give the thumbs-down to bands that you’ve loved ever since you were a kid. The recent AC/DC album wasn’t up to snuff, and now another band I used to kill for, ZZ Top, is walking on soft ground. What’s the world coming to?

Actually, the decline of ZZ Top started some time ago, I hate to say.  The band’s best-selling album ever, 1983’s Eliminator, saw the group hit the jackpot with a more streamlined, bigger-sounding blues-rock than past LPs—which was fine—but everything they’ve done since sounds pretty well the same. Time’s running out on the bearded ones.