Los Lonely Boys have never sounded more cosmopolitan, never more engaged in the wider musical landscape around them, and yet Revelation isn’t all about previously untried sounds. The brothers keep their feet firmly planted on a now familiar soul-soaked blues-rock firmament.
And so, for every splash of conjunto newness (the opening “Blame It On Love”), they dive back into a bubbling blues cauldron (with songs like “See the Light”) on this forthcoming release, due January 21, 2014 via LonelyTone/Playing in Traffic. The bright surprise of those reggae riddums on “Give a Little More” is balanced by a return to their roots with the slow-boiling “So Sensual.” Revelation offers a burst of sunny pop on “There’s Always Tomorrow,” and the pastoral stoicism of “It’s Just My Heart Talkin,'” but without abandoning the more-expected R&B-inflected joys of “Can’t Slow Down” or the scalding growl of “Rule the World.”
Credit goes to siblings Henry, Jojo and Ringo Garza, who — after suffering through some health issues for Henry — broadly expand upon the foundational elements found throughout the Los Lonely Boys catalog without wandering too far afield. They brought in some heavy-hitting collaborators (including Radney Foster, David Quinones, Keith Harris, George Pajon Jr. and Matthew Gerrard, among others), but they never lost sight of what hurtled them to a Grammy win and a Top 20 hit over a handful of previous studio efforts.
That, of course, was a family bond, in life and in music. They’ve made new friends on Revelation, and learned a few things along the way. But nothing has broken this air-tight band of brothers, and this album — simultaneously Los Lonely Boys’ most inventive, but also a glorious recaptulation of everything that always made them great — is the proof.
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