POP MUSIC REVIEW : Beneath the Glittery Package Lies a Voice of Gold : Gary Morris, of soap-opera and ‘Les Miz’ renown, demonstrates at the Crazy Horse Steak House his wide range, a rich harmonic makeup and master phrasing.

It is possible that, behind the bare-shouldered-embrace jacket art of a romance paperback, the great American novel waits, overlooked. Stranger troves have been found.

Take Gary Morris, for instance. The guy is practically a walking romance novel: His smoldering good looks have been a staple on TV soap operas; women swooned when he took the lead in productions of “Les Miserables” and “La Boheme”; and his attempts at country music detail a gothic landscape where pickup trucks never tread.

But however florid a package Morris’ voice is placed in, there is no disguising that he has one of the finest throats in popular music. Throughout his wide range, his voice boasts a strong support and a rich harmonic makeup. His projection and enunciation could make him clearly heard in a concert hall, and he phrases like a master.

All of which adds up to squat if the feeling isn’t there, but he also displayed a reasonable amount of that at the Crazy Horse Steak House on Monday night. Backed by an empathic quartet made up of guitarist Gary Hooker, keyboardist Chuck Glass, bassist Don Johnson and drummer Rick Lonow, Morris only sang a couple of songs common to past local performances. Instead he concentrated on his current “Full Moon, Empty Heart” album, and on lesser-known tunes from his catalogue.

While rarely coming up with gold on the new songs, at least they were fresh. Both “Promised Land” and “Full Moon on an Empty Heart” were lean pop tunes. They, and the offbeat “Moosechin Stew,” offered a respite from Morris’ weightier tomes. Of those, the ballad “Man Upstairs” nearly sank from its gravity. Morris said that he hoped the song, a tale of generational accord between once-distant neighbors, would stand up next to his classic 1983 hit, “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” but the lyric called for intimacy when all it got was an anthem-like vacuity.

The lovelorn “The Light May Not Be On” used Morris’ dramatic range to stronger effect. Better yet was “A Bed of Roses,” on which Morris reined in his huge voice, letting an understated, low-register vocal create a hazy, almost Van Morrison-like mood. That was abetted by a round of ruminative instrumentals from the band members, capped by an acoustic guitar solo from Morris. As sensitive as was the support from his band, Morris, as usual, was at his best during his solo portion of the show. As soon as the band exited, audience calls for “Les Miz” started up, which Morris cut short by saying, “Wait a minute, you go pay $50 if you want to see ‘Les Miz!’ He then tossed off a snippet of one of its tunes, sung with a joking twang.

He announced he’s giving some thought to doing West Coast dates with an orchestra next year that would feature some “Les Miz” songs then, and said he’ll never take the stage role again. He explained: “It’s just they’re so damn cheap, they don’t want to pay me. They’re making loads of money, and I want some of it.”

If Morris’ abundant talents have given him an attitude, he deals with it well onstage, playing up to that image with a curmudgeonly repartee. At one point, after hushing one over-ardent fan, he told her, “I dedicate this song to you,” then sang the opening line “I wish you’d go away” from “When I Close My Eyes.”

The gruff demeanor is an ideal foil for the unabashed romanticism of his singing, which was at its finest delineating an aching, near-hopeless love in “Dragging the Lake for the Moon,” and, in polar contrast, the redemptive power of love in “The Love She Found in Me.”

Other songs in the set included “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” the Yuletide “O Holy Night” and the rocking “The Jaws of Modern Romance.” For his closing song, Morris gave in to calls for “Les Miz” by singing the centerpiece, “Bring Him Home,” pushing the vocal up into a melismatic falsetto reminiscent of Aaron Neville.