Strange Boys, Live Music. I recall a high school acquaintance who would persist in pronouncing the Rolling Stone album Love You Live as if it were a tribute to Liv Ullman rather than a tour document. The short-i quality of living resurfaces more subtly with Live Music, in which “Live” is meant to sound as it does in “Live dangerously” or “live for the moment” or “live it up” or “you might as well live.” While not technically or intentionally a long-i live album, Live Music sure sounds at times like it could be. It’s muddy and earthy loose and free.
I can precisely describe what his music sounds like, but the references are so obscure they’d only confuse. The Strange Boys sound like The Kinks, but only the middle bits of a couple of songs on Muswell Hillbillies. They sound a little like early David Essex, but you’d have to know something beyond Rock On. They sound like Leon Russell at his most stripped-down and laid-back; the songs of his nobody knows. They sound like some of Gordon Gano’s gospel experiments.
Mostly they sound like themselves, in the best sense. Moments of Randy Newman and Tom Waits, but literally moments. Several distinct musicians doing distinct things. Everything feels comfortable from the unpretentious song titles (“You Take Everything for Granite When You’re Stone”) to the soothing yet stirring sounds.