La Futura

La Futura is the fifteenth studio album by American rock band ZZ Top, released on September 8, 2012. It is the band's first album in nine years, following Mescalero, and peaked at number 5 on the Billboard "Top Rock Albums" chart. La Futura is also the last studio album released in bassist Dusty Hill's lifetime.

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 am. 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 album's lead single, "I Gotsta Get Paid", is a cover of "25 Lighters" by Houston hip hop artist DJ DMD. The song "Chartreuse" was inspired by the famous French liqueur, which the band discovered at the 2011 Musilac Music Festival in the French town of Aix-les-Bains.

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 in June 2011 at the request of the NASA astronaut Mike Fossum, 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 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 of Allmusic 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."

Personnel
ZZ Top
 * Billy Gibbons – vocals (lead on all but "Drive by Lover"), guitar, production
 * Dusty Hill – bass, keyboards, vocals (lead on "Drive by Lover")
 * Frank Beard – drums

Additional musicians
 * Joe Hardy – piano, Hammond B3 organ, recording
 * James Harman – harmonica
 * 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 – mastering
 * Gary Moon – recording
 * Sean Oakley – recording
 * Rick Rubin – production
 * Mark Santangelo – mastering
 * Joe Spix – art direction and design