It’s Those Texas Graybeards Again : ZZ TOP “Recycler” <i> Warner Bros.</i>

Appropriate title. Ten-gallon tongues firmly planted in beards, the looooosest lil’ hi-tech power trio in Heaven, Hell or Tejas appropriates old blues, punkadelicks, sequencers, and a second slag-heapin’ helpin’ o’ sounds found on their own earlier records.

And why not? When it comes to sly humor and collective musicianship, how many acts out there wanna go one-on-one in a battle of the bands with the Top? Judas Priest? AC/DC? Gimme a break. Spinal Tap? Maybe. Even, say the Smiths--arguably more imaginative, and certifiably more pretentious--called it quits before trying to stretch their ideas through half as many albums as ZZ’s done now.

Check out the scorched-earth performance on “My Head’s in Mississippi.” Sure, the riff is older than dirt and John Lee Hooker, but how many people’s lyrics capture the fine-ground blend of surrealism and dread essential to the country blues idiom? Or get that arid laugh (ha) in after the line about the 10,000 clowns in the slow, minor-key “2000 Blues.”

Not to mention that pair of spacious, beautifully developed guitar solos. Or the deathless lines “Her lips were wet / And I bet / She was suckin’ on a watermelon rind” (“Decision or Collision”), the pleasebabybabyplease tone of “Give It Up,” the relish with which ZZ attacks the o-b-v-i-o-u-s metaphor of “Burger Man,” the intergalactic Muddy Waters/”Shakin’ All Over” resonances of “Concrete and Steel” and . . . and . . . , oh yeah, the ecological info message on the inner sleeve.