RECORD OF THE WEEK:

MAZZY STAR - SO TONIGHT THAT I MIGHT SEE (1993)

As soon as the needle drops on So Tonight That I Might See, the album’s opening track Fade Into You descends like a thick, narcotic fog that lingers through every hypnotic pulse and languid incantation that follows on Mazzy Star’s sophomore record. Hope Sandoval’s voice, like spectral molasses, coalesces with the desolate majesty of David Roback’s into a velvet dream: shimmering, deep and haunting.

Mazzy Star were LA’s contribution to early 90’s dream pop - a scene characterised by sweeping, atmospheric production techniques used to create deep, hazy sonic landscapes - think Galaxie 500 and the Cocteau Twins. While So Tonight That I Might See’s pulsing organs and bluesy drones aren’t necessarily characteristic of the dream pop sound, the deep spell cast over the course of the record created an intimate, otherworldly feeling that made it a perfect fit. 

So Tonight That I May See also holds an off-label distinction: it was considered one of the go-to makeout records of the 90’s. Commenting on the record’s multi-platinum sales, a Capitol records executive said “All those kids have boyfriends and girlfriends, and they like to neck, and I don’t think they listen to Barry White.”

After combing through interviews with Mazzy Star conducted around the release of So Tonight That I Might See, it becomes still clearer that Barry White they ain’t. One journalist described his experience attempting to interview the notoriously withdrawn Sandoval and Roback as “throwing stones down a deep well and waiting for the faint splash,” while another simply likened the experience to “drinking sand”.

With no illuminating words from Mazzy Star beyond their comments regarding stage fright and the frivolity of the music press, one must turn to the record itself to find meaning - not necessarily a bad thing, but given the nostalgic quality of the music, you can’t help but see your own memories peering back through the fog. It is perhaps this quality, stubbornly defiant of analysis, that makes So Tonight That I Might See feel so special. As Sandoval wrote in a poem a few days after Roback’s death, So Tonight That I Might See is “filled with the comforting sadness that holds us together.”

Pete Whelan

⚡️ RECORD OF THE WEEK ⚡️⭐️ In celebration of Fandango (ZZ Top Tribute Band) playing here last Friday ♥️

ELIMINATOR - ZZ TOP (1983) ⭐️ ZZ Top put the excess back in Texas with the mega platinum Eliminator.

Eliminator catapulted ZZ Top into the eighties like greased lightning. The chopped 1933 model T on the album’s cover sums things up nicely: the band’s original true-steel exterior remained rugged - as tough as a two-dollar steak - but this time around, things under the hood had been hot rodded with lazer-like synths, machine gun drum machines and 80’s production so dang slick it made you wanna slap your mammy.

Already a decade-old boogie rock band from Texas, ZZ Top weren’t at the top of anyone’s list to wind up as MTV darlings, but when Eliminator singles Gimme All Your Lovin', Sharp Dressed Man and Legs received high rotation on the hot new channel, that little ol’ band from Texas found themselves smack-dab in the middle of the Beavis and Butthead generation’s cultural zeitgeist.

The band’s Texas-meets-Vegas drip won them a huge new audience who requested their clips in record-breaking numbers. Absurd and hyper-stylised, the music videos revolved around cool cars and hot babes, resonating with ZZ Top’s tongue-in-cheek anthems of burning rubber, drinking beer and dressing sharply. Combined with the band’s luscious facial hair, upholstered guitars and rhinestone-studded wardrobe, the optics of Eliminator deftly tapped into the adolescent male fantasies of middle America, catapulting them into the rarefied air of superstardom.

Don’t let their hard-partying persona fool you, though. Eliminator’s musical evolution from ZZ Top’s previous albums was a result of songwriter and frontman Billy Gibbons’ analysis of the data behind hit songs. Finding that most hits clustered around 124 beats per minute, the band recorded most of the album’s songs faster than much of their previous output at 125, using drum machines and click-tracks - a practice which was frowned upon in the purist blues scene from which they sprang. 

The synthesisers and blockbuster music videos don’t change the fact that this is very much a ZZ Top record though, and one of their finest to boot. Dripping with offbeat sexual innuendo, Gibbons’ nasty riffing and the legendary boogie rhythms of Frank Beard and the late Dusty Hill, the band, at their core, had always been the same - they were just savvy enough to keep things fresh by changing the window dressing once in a while. "Unsaddle that pony or shoot him,” Gibbons once remarked, “but don't ride him into the ground.”

Pete Whelan

RECORD OF THE WEEK: COLD CHISEL - BREAKFAST AT SWEETHEARTS (1979)

By 1978, Cold Chisel had exploded into the national consciousness with their eponymous debut record, buoyed by the top 20 success of the Don Walker-penned Khe Sanh.

Emblematic of Chisel’s style, Khe Sanh was a rough and ready rock n’ roll number underpinned by the often poignant storytelling of Chisel keyboardist and chief songwriter Don Walker.

By the time the band were recording their sophomore effort, Breakfast at Sweethearts, their well-documented bad-boy lifestyle during the extensive tour in support of their first album had begin to catch up with them and burn-out had set in.

As a consequence, Walker called the Sweethearts sessions “a very bad low point for the band. We were constantly touring and when we got a weekend off we were thrown into the studio and expected to be creative."

Additionally, the band’s relationship with producer Richard Batchens, whose work they had admired on Richard Clapton’s Goodbye Tiger, was fraught.

"We went into the studio with him and it was absolutely disastrous,” said Walker. “We were in a shit room with this bad tempered cunt. But don't quote me. Don't say he was bad tempered." 

Against the odds, though, Breakfast at Sweethearts emerged as one of Cold Chisel’s most cohesive records. Walker’s life in King’s Cross, Sydney’s epicentre of debauchery, formed a lyrical thread that ran through the album.

Sonically, Sweethearts was certainly bathed in the glow of the Cross’s neon lights, but, as with much of Walker’s songwriting, it’s the introspective storytelling that elevated the material beyond being just exceptional pub rock.

Album Highlight: The titular Breakfast at Sweethearts is a laid-back, dub-inflected portrait of the weary morning crowd at Walker’s favourite breakfast spot. Toby Creswell described Sweethearts as being “cramped between strip clubs and sex shops, patronised by the hookers, pimps and drug dealers and the lost and lonely debris of the night.” The original location is now occupied by a McDonalds.

RECORD OF THE WEEK: ZZ TOP - Tres Hombres (1973)

Before vocalist/guitarist Billy Gibbons and bassist Dusty Hill  sprouted their now-legendary facial hair (drummer Frank Beard - ironically - has always chosen to remain moustachioed), ZZ Top perfected their Texan brand of flame grilled boogie on their third album, Tres Hombres, cracking the top ten for the first time and minting themselves as blues-rock icons in the process.

From the rock-‘em-sock-‘em one-two punch of dual album openers Waitin’ For the Bus and Jesus Just Left Chicago through to the iconic La Grange, the band shuffle drunkenly from strength to strength over the course of the album and lay the foundation for the John Lee Hooker-styled electric boogie that became their calling card. 

Tres Hombres is rich with the southern-rock histrionics and tongue-in-cheek attitude that made ZZ Top folk heroes in their native Texas. The subject matter of these songs ranges from the perils of public transportation, Jesus traveling across America, beer drinking, hell-raising and an ode to “the Chicken Ranch”, Texas’ oldest bordello which had to close its doors after the attention it received after the release of La Grange. If the material sounds a little trope-y, it is, but joyously so. It helps that Gibbons has always handled his lyrical duties with a cartoonish sense of whimsy, preventing the songs from falling into self-seriousness.

Deadly serious, on the other hand, is the muscular and articulate blues ZZ Top play on this record - hot, blue and righteous enough to take a little ol’ band from Texas nationwide.

Written by bar staff member and all round legend Pete Whelan

• Listen to Pete Whelan's Podcast - the L FIlES here 

• Listen to ZZ TOP’s - tres hombres album here