I like it, though it's not what I expected. Of course, I'm not sure what I expected. Strangely is an iconoclast, and his music, based on what I can find on Youtube, doesn't fit the conventional molds. In fact, it's probably more accurate to call him a performance artist than a musician, though music is part of said performance. For examples, here are some videos:
There's a bit of old-timey spirit and some hillbilly influence. My favorite track on the album (sadly, not depicted above) is "Hey Lady," a kind of louldly touching tribute to a woman in New York.
The only musical issue I have with the CD is that there's a certain intensity on it that I haven't seen in his earlier music. Some of tracks sound very angry as a result. It's almost as if Strangely felt he had to come through big time and was just trying too hard.
The packaging is, of course, a real DIY job. The disk is a Verbatim CD-R designed to resemble a record (you know, those big black vinyl thingies they used to make). No one bothered even to write the name of the album, or artist or anything on it. The CD case is brown cardboard with minimal black ink. The song titles are on a paper insert.
Strangely did write (on the inside of the case), "To Marc, My only fan in (Jamaica) New York..." and he signed it. He also inserted a paper with a handwritten note expressing his hope that we got through superstorm Sandy OK. I don't have the heart to tell him that my wife is also a fan of his, and she's in Jamaica, New York. I suspect that his Kickstarter money was almost exclusively from his Bellingham fan base, and there were very few contributors from elsewhere. So he was tickled to see a New York address.
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