Latin Playboys: Lobos Cavorting Animatedly in the Moonlight

Even people who live in Tahiti need to go somewhere else now and then, which helps to explain the Latin Playboys, the moonlighting project started about five years ago by Los Lobos’ singer-guitarist-songwriter David Hidalgo and drummer-songwriter Louie Perez.

With the recent release of its second album, “Dose,” the part-time outfit--in which Hidalgo and Perez are joined by their buddy producer-musicians Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake--is on its first tour, which stopped Wednesday at the Galaxy Theatre in Santa Ana.

The question raised by the tour--on which the four are joined by drummer Ruben Estrada and on several numbers by their opening act, Lisa Germano--is how the skillful amalgam of music and sonic effects on the Playboys’ two albums would work in a live setting. Not surprisingly, given these players’ lifetime batting averages, it worked quite well.

“Cuca’s Blues” is typical of “Dose,” a reminiscence made at once tangibly real and dreamily reflective by the fitful interplay of Hidalgo’s sweet vocals and stinging electric guitar lines against Froom’s eerie keyboard parts.

Such sonic experiments take those of Lobos’ “Kiko” and “Colossal Head” albums even further, though the result still isn’t light-years away from Lobos’ most ambitious efforts, which made the half-capacity turnout for the Playboys a bit surprising.