MICHAEL TALBOTT TRICKED me. I'd been listening to the MP3s on his site, www.michaeltalbott.com, all week and wondering how he and his band, the Wolfkings, were going to perform their painstakingly quiet songs in front of a boisterous Friday-night audience eager to get their Halloween on. Perhaps sensing that he had roughly two and a half minutes to wow before people started relating that day's office gossip to one another, he got down to business.

Talbott and the Wolfkings began with "Winter Streets," a meditation on city life that drew listeners in with its lyrics and held them with a deceptively simple, repetitive chorus of "la-di-da"s straight out of an eastern European folk song. Armed with nothing but a mic stand and some great melodies, Talbott impressed immediately with a folk-tinged tenor that provided a perfect counterpoint to the cosmopolitan lyrics of his song. His quiet yet unfaltering delivery summoned bits of Nick Cave and Richard Thompson without coming off as overly studied.

Not that there hasn't been plenty of time put in on the rehearsal tip: The Wolfkings have been around in one form or another for the better part of two years now. Created as a backing band for recording Talbott's own songs, they are a veritable supergroup of local talent that features guitarists M.C. Taylor and Scott Hirsch and drummer James Kim of the Court and Spark. Round it out with Paul K. from Antenna Farm Records on bass and Oranger and Paula Frazer band veteran Patrick Main on keyboards, and you've got almost too much street cred for one stage.

Talbott himself is, of course, a fixture on the San Francisco scene: He was in Mover, the Calculators, and Winter Flowers before he turned his attention to this solo project. Turns out Taylor and Hirsch are also producing Talbott's upcoming debut, Freeze-Die-Come to Life (Antenna Farm), in their own studio, giving them an even deeper insight into his songs. All of this has apparently freed Talbott to concentrate on tweaking his live sound, resulting in an almost total overhaul of the songs as they appear on his album.

Take "Goodnight," a sweet, bucolic lullaby. While there were definitely a few sticky moments before the song gained momentum, it was stripped of its sentimentality in the live version and, save for its melodic theme (played flawlessly by Hirsch and Main throughout), became almost country rock. The uptempo change certainly hinted at the Court and Spark's work. Freed from the confines of their trademark sound and shows, and the expectations that accompany both, Taylor, Hirsch, and Kim were permitted to expand into Arab Strap-like expositions of guitar-driven noise. It was during those moments that everyone in the band seemed to be enjoying themselves the most.

Not all the songs strayed far from their origins. "Angel of Light" was a minstrel's waltz that kept its composure and held a potentially chatty audience at bay with just enough twang to keep things moving forward. While there could have been a little bit more stage banter to engage the crowd between songs, Talbott was unapologetic. "We don't know any jokes," he said without a trace of irony, as Taylor tuned a guitar.

The most surprising moment of all was definitely " Gray Day," a song that I remembered as a sigh-filled contemplation that would make even Morrissey despair. It took a moment to recognize the number in its shiny new pop jacket. With its chorus newly emphasized, the song revealed an anthemic, sing-along quality that came off as the stuff of a movie soundtrack you can't shake from your subconscious. Nuances aside, the real tribute to Talbott's music was an audience that stayed put for his entire set instead of wandering off for shots of Jäger at the first sign of folk.

Michael Talbott and the Wolfkings play music that approaches you like a stranger you can't stop looking at, aloof yet vaguely familiar just the same. If you've got to debut an album that won't be out till 2006, you could do worse than perform with an all-star cast. If you've got an album full of moody, autumnal reveries, you could do a lot worse than to redesign them as commanding tempests-in-teacups onstage. (Kate Izquierdo)