Brotherly Blues

The Delgado Brothers, a local band that has just made its album debut on independent Hightone Records, are consistently compared with either blues hero Robert Cray or Los Lobos--and the reasons why were displayed Saturday at the Lingerie.

The Lobos comparison probably has as much or more to do with shared ethnicity and hometown (East Los Angeles) than it does the band’s occasional fast boogie. For the most part, the quartet (three brothers plus a keyboard player) seemed much closer in spirit--and in emphasis on guitar solos--to Cray, whose producers work with these guys, too. And hot-chops guitarist Joe Delgado has definitely also done a little studying at the Carlos Santana school.

It was about as melodic and commercial as anything that can genuinely be called the blues gets these days. Compelling, though? Not always, unless you have a fetish for smooth vocals and smooth lyrics about adulteries-gone-wrong sandwiched between high-end guitar solos. Of course, that cheatin’ song approach has hardly limited the appeal of Cray, or of an even more obvious blues-rock antecedent, Eric Clapton. This stuff does go down easy.