Kevin Bronson on April 12th, 2010

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It’s hard to listen to the music of Cary Brothers without visualizing the television and film protagonists his songs have serenaded – starting, famously, with “Blue Eyes” from his college buddy Zach Braff’s 2004 movie “Garden State.” Chilling moments of self-realization, hyper-romantic love scenes, startling plot points: Brothers’ tunes, for better or for worse (but certainly better for his pocketbook), have oozed from scads of them.

• ||| Photos by Jeff Koga

Which can be a curse when presented with just the tunesmith himself, as the capacity crowd at the Hotel Cafe was on Friday night. As if the frequently interchangeable nature of balladeers doesn’t pose enough of an identity crisis, Brothers’ songs suffer the superficially narrow interpretations of his directors; it’s simply hard to feel them outside of that context.

On Friday, Brothers’ material was on its own, and it fared just fine. The occasion was the record-release party for his sophomore album, “Under Control,” and while the Nashville-bred artist could easily have filled a bigger room, he chose to celebrate at the cozy Cahuenga Boulevard venue where he rose to prominence. Genial, earnest and maybe a little bit self-conscious – “I kind feel like I’m starting over,” he said of sending his second record out into the world – Brothers felt the warm embrace of friends and longtime fans.

The music hugged them back, and not just his quintet’s room-silencing rendition of his biggest hit. The songs from “Under Control” have a broader (but still familiar-sounding) reach than his 2007 debut, “Who You Are,” and whether Brothers took on arena-sized anthems (“Ghost Town”) or bedroom meditations (“Belong”) his material exuded the buoyant qualities of the British bands he admires so much. In fact, any fan of the band Travis should be a fan of Brothers – I that swear he and the Scottish frontman Fran Healy swallow the vowel in the word “space” the same way.

Amid “Under Control’s” honey-glazed melodies and swelling choruses, there is one curveball, even if it’s a Brothers interpretation rather than creation. It’s his cover of the 1985 Level 42 hit “Something About You,” drained of all its faux-funk and turned into a boy-girl pop song. On the album, and on Friday night, the singer-songwriter was joined by the formerly L.A.-based songstress Laura Jansen (who, it turns out, has relocated to Holland, where she’s gained notoriety for her cover of Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody”).

It was one of those vintage Hotel Cafe moments where conventions are bowed, though not necessarily broken. In fact, the biggest risk on this warm-and-fuzzy Friday might have been taken by Brothers’ opening act, Joey Ryan. Along with guitarist Kenneth Pattengale, Ryan covered a Cary Brothers song, “Ghost Town.”

Party foul, perhaps? “We asked his permission,” Ryan said.