difficult to find the closest voice to joel gibbs in pop history. but in this live version of "boys of melody" the way he uses his voice especially at the end where it goes up and up is not too far from somerville i find. it is definitely not like morrissey's and even less like the guy from belle and sebastian. there is something extremely touching about it. there is absolutely no mannerism. he is embracing the melody with his voice. he is delivering himself. the whole song is his voice actually. i also streamed the concert at justconcerts and the version he sings there was significantly inferior. overall i found the concert rather disappointing (except "miracle").

if you ever get the chance, go see them live. i saw them last year and it was awesome. about 7 people on stage (although that is prone to vary, i've heard number of members in the live-band can go up to 12 or so), coming on by walking (and playing and singing) through the crowd. there's a lot of fun in their performance while joel gibbs voice and appearance (somewhat sleepy-eyed) adds a subtle hint of melancholy.

about the voice: there's no sommerville connection in my perception at all, but i can relate to your description you provided above. it has a very nice, smoothily cracked quality.