***3/4. Getting off to a good start

Review Score: (8/10)
ZZ Top's 1970 debut remains one of their roughest and certainly bluesiest albums.
It's a gritty little blues-rock record with lots of fuzzy guitar, rollicking barrelhouse rhythms and a raw, gutsy sound, and "ZZ Top's First Album" offers a handful of really excellent songs, like the tough "Brown Sugar" (not the Stones song), the swaggering, riff-driven "Goin' Down To Mexico", and the slow grind of "Just Got Back From Baby's".

Some may find that a number of these songs glide by on their tough, gut-bucket grooves without offering anything truly memorable, and while it is true that not every one of these ten songs is an instant all-time classic, the overall level is quite high with several peaks and very few let-downs.
This is 34 minutes of tight, well-played blues-rock, as muscular as anything ZZ Top has ever put out. Less MTV-friendly than their 80s pop concessions, of course, but all the more gritty and authentic.
3 3/4 stars. Nice.

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