The review from the Washington Post:<P>Soledad Brothers At the Black Cat<P>"We preach the blues every night and every day" is how lead guitarist and singer Johnny Walker described his band from the Black Cat's backstage Tuesday night. But the Soledad Brothers didn't crawl out of the Mississippi Delta; the gritty trio actually sprang from the same Detroit scene as the White Stripes. Having formal connections to Jack White (he produced their debut album) and legendary Detroit rabble-rouser John Sinclair (he wrote gushing liner notes for it) doesn't mean the Soledads sound just like the Stripes or the MC5, however. Their 45-minute set Tuesday was thick with speedy gutbucket blues.<P>Driven by drummer Benjamin Swank, who pounded his three-drum, two-cymbal kit with nonstop adrenaline, Walker and Oliver Henry twisted their guitars around blues structures that aimed for a combination of John Lee Hooker's snake-moan and the Rolling Stones circa "Exile on Main Street." Despite the fact that Walker sings with a high, wavering lilt, the trio's blues were raw and convincing, and the waves of warm guitar distortion on songs like "Break 'em on Down" growled powerfully.<P>The Soledad Brothers are supposedly named for the California prison in which members of the Black Panther Party were incarcerated in the 1960s and '70s, but the trio's music contained nary a whiff of politics. In fact, if the Soledads' manifesto isn't the blues, it might well be the musical anarchy of Michigan's favorite sons, the Stooges. That band's essence wafted into the room when Henry strapped on a saxophone, closing a fine set with a staggering number that ended up like Iggy and company's "L.A. Blues."<P>-- Patrick Foster <P>
