CD review
Los Lonely Boys' 'Sacred'
Defiant sounds of 'Sacred' are close to divine
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Los Lonely Boys
'Sacred'
(Epic, available Tuesday, July 18)
What do you do when your major-label debut becomes one of the best-selling blues-rock albums of all time? If you're San Angelo's wonderfully gifted Los Lonely Boys, you go for a fuller, meatier sound. And you approach your art with a steady defiance that says you will play as you feel and that's how it is.
Less than 20 seconds into the album's leadoff track "My Way," you can hear that something different is going on, as a horn section and thick waves of organ beef up Henry Garza's declaration of independence. But before the song is over, it's obvious that the brothers Garza sticking with what made them. The guitar leads soar into the Fender Stratosphere, the harmonies dress up the bar-band blues rock and touches of Latin rhythm give the whole sound an exotic bounce.
Originally titled "Orale," after one of the album's more accessible rompers, "Sacred" is a better-sounding album than the first one. Although the songs don't have the "where'd that come from?" mystique of the 2004 smash "Heaven," the brothers have put together an album that's just so bursting with musicianship that the lyrical clichés are excused. Blues rock, after all, is not the forum for budding Baudelaires.
As with gospel songs, the material on "Sacred" generally starts calm, introspective, then works itself into a fiery jam of emotion. Henry Garza's guitar-playing borders on spectacular, as he steps out of the shadows of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Carlos Santana to rock to his own tone at the end of "Living My Life." Besides being a flat-out ripper, the eldest Garza displays a great sense of melody in his solos. His resurrection of the electric blues guitar hero is quite stunning.
The knock on "Sacred" is that it sounds too much like it was made on purpose. Hitting stores a year later than originally projected, it comes off like a record toiled on and fussed over, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Even though "Sacred" won't take you to "Heaven," it'll show you some lovely spots on Earth.
