''La Futura'' is the fifteenth studio album by American

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

band

ZZ Top ZZ Top is an American rock band formed in 1969 in Houston, Texas. For 51 years, they comprised vocalist-guitarist Billy Gibbons, drummer Frank Beard and vocalist-bassist Dusty Hill, until Hill's death in 2021. ZZ Top developed a signature sound ...

, released on September 8, 2012. It is the band's first album in nine years, following ''

Mescalero Mescalero or Mescalero Apache ( apm, Naa'dahéńdé) is an Apache tribe of Southern Athabaskan–speaking Native Americans. The tribe is federally recognized as the Mescalero Apache Tribe of the Mescalero Apache Reservation, located in south-cen ...

'', and peaked at number 5 on the ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' "Top Rock Albums" chart. ''La Futura'' is also the last studio album to feature bassist

Dusty Hill Joe Michael "Dusty" Hill (May 19, 1949 – July 28, 2021) was an American musician who was the bassist of the rock band ZZ Top for more than 50 years. He also sang lead and backing vocals and played keyboards. Hill was born in Dallas, Texas, an ...

before his death on July 28, 2021.

Overview

''La Futura'' was recorded at The Foambox Recordings in Houston, Texas. The album title and album art were unveiled on ZZ Top's homepage on 3 August 2012 at 11:45 a.m. The album contains 10 tracks. "We thought long and hard about what this album should be," Gibbons said in a press release. "We wanted to recall the directness of our early stuff but not turn our backs on contemporary technology. The result of this melding of the past and the present is, of course, ''La Futura''." The lead single "I Gotsta Get Paid" is a cover of "25 Lighters" by DJ DMD. The song "Chartreuse" is about the famous French liqueur

Chartreuse Chartreuse () may refer to: Food and drink * Chartreuse (liqueur), a French liqueur * Chartreuse (dish), a French dish of vegetables or meat tightly wrapped in vegetable leaves and cooked in a mould Religion * Carthusians, a Catholic religi ...

the band discovered (and loved) in their dressing room in 2011 during the

Musilac Music Festival Musilac is a French music festival. It occurs in Aix-les-Bains, France every year since 2002. It lasts between two and four days, in mid-July, at the Esplanade of the Lac du Bourget. The festival's popularity has steadily increased, with about 75 ...

Aix-les-Bains Aix-les-Bains (, ; frp, Èx-los-Bens; la, Aquae Gratianae), locally simply Aix, is a commune in the southeastern French department of Savoie.

Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (ARA; ; frp, Ôvèrgne-Rôno-Ârpes; oc, Auvèrnhe Ròse Aups; it, Alvernia-Rodano-Alpi) is a region in southeast-central France created by the 2014 territorial reform of French regions; it resulted from the merger of Au ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Release

The first four album tracks —"I Gotsta Get Paid", "Chartreuse", "Consumption" and "Over You"—were first released on 5 June 2012 as an iTunes-only collection titled ''Texicali'', which met with strong sales and glowing reviews. ''Music Radar'' summed up the tunes as "fresh, vital roadhouse blues." Another track, "Flyin' High", appropriately made its world premiere in space, when the then-unfinished song was played on board a Soyuz spacecraft during its launch to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...

in June 2011 at the request of the NASA astronaut

Mike Fossum Michael Edward Fossum (born December 19, 1957, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota) is a former American astronaut, engineer, and thChief Operating Officer of Texas A&M University at Galveston He flew into space on board the NASA Space Shuttle missions S ...

, a long-time ZZ Top fan and friend. Two bonus tracks, titled "Threshold of a Breakdown" and "Drive-By Lover", were released on CDs sold exclusively at

Best Buy Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebra ...

stores.

Reception

Following its release, the album received mostly positive reviews. William Clark of ''Guitar International'' wrote, "La Futura is an impressive return to form for this infamous southern rock trio, and includes some of the best music ZZ Top has ever pushed out."

Stephen Thomas Erlewine Stephen Thomas Erlewine (; born June 18, 1973) is an American music critic and senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance writer, occ ...

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

also praised the album, calling it their best album since '' Eliminator'' in 1983, while writing that "ZZ Top are celebrating everything that they've taken for granted for decades – they're embracing the sleazy boogie, the dirty jokes, the locomotive riffs, the saturated blues, the persistent lecherous leer, and by doing so they finally sound like themselves again."

Track listing

Personnel

ZZ Top *

Billy Gibbons William Frederick Gibbons (born December 16, 1949) is an American musician who is the guitarist and lead singer of the rock band ZZ Top. He began his career in the band the Moving Sidewalks, which recorded a full-length album entitled, ''Flas ...

–

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stati ...

– bass,

keyboards Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

, vocals * Frank Beard –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

Additional musicians *Joe Hardy – piano,

Hammond B3 organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding #Drawbars, drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs ...

, recording *

James Harman James Gary Harman (June 8, 1946 – May 23, 2021) was an American blues harmonica player, singer, and songwriter. The music journalist Tony Russell described Harman as an "amusing songwriter and an excellent, unfussy blues harp player". Biogra ...

–

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...

*Dave Sardy – piano, Hammond B3 organ, mixing Technical personnel *Cameron Barton – engineering *Ryan Castle – engineering *Pedro Chapouris – photography *Ross Halfin – photography *Jason Lader – recording *Eric Lynn – recording *

Vlado Meller Vlado Meller is a Slovak audio mastering engineer, currently with Vlado Meller Mastering in Charleston, South Carolina. Meller works across many genres of music, with credits on rock, hip-hop, pop, jazz, metal, dance, opera, Broadway, and classica ...

– mastering *Gary Moon – recording *Sean Oakley – recording *

Rick Rubin Frederick Jay Rubin (; born March 10, 1963) is an American record producer. He is the co-founder (alongside Russell Simmons) of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records. Rubin helped popula ...

– production *Mark Santangelo – mastering *Joe Spix –

art direction Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and unify the visi ...

and

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Futura 2012 albums Albums produced by Rick Rubin Albums produced by Billy Gibbons American Recordings (record label) albums ZZ Top albums Albums recorded at Shangri-La (recording studio)