Billy Gibbons And The BFGs, Perfectamundo - album review

Download: Got Love If You Want It; Pickin’ Up Chicks on Dowling Street; Sal Y Pimiento

Billy Gibbons and the BFGs

ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, it transpires, was as a youth taught percussion by none other than Tito Puente, and that early grounding clearly came flooding back for Perfectamundo, a tribute to Afro-Cuban music recorded almost as an apology for his being unable to perform at the 2014 Havana Jazz Festival.

It’s a treat of shuffle and strut, with the timbales, surging organ and spicy syncopated piano helping tracks like “Treat Her Right”, “Sal Y Pimiento” and “Pickin’ Up Chicks On Dowling Street” skate along nicely: in places, it sounds like the best old-school early-period Santana album Carlos and chums went all “Jazz Odyssey” on Caravanserai.

There are a few nods to Gibbons’ ZZ Top style in tracks like the loping boogie version of “Baby Please Don’t Go” and Slim Harpo’s “Got Love If You Want It”, where his guitar snarls with a languid, snake-like charm.