Greatest Hits

One of ZZ Top's great gifts is its concision; even in the side-long-jam era of the '70s, the Texans almost always fit 10 cuts on their albums. Surveying two decades of their output, Greatest Hits isn't the perfect overview you might expect, but it's still a pretty darn good driving album. The disc goes easy on the pre-Deguello stuff surveyed on their earlier best-of, and seems to digitally boost the drums on tracks like the 1975 "Tush." Still, later cuts like "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide" and "My Head's in Mississippi" are full-on triumphs of this trio's very weird, very blues-drenched sensibility. --Rickey Wright