DeAngelis has assembled a formidable creative unit around him. Guitarist and producer Billy Kennedy, a nine-year collaborator, brings a production sensibility that allows the track's disparate elements to cohere without sacrificing their individual character. The rhythm section—Eric Bishop's bass and Cole Herudek's drums—provides the muscular foundation necessary to support the song's more adventurous inclinations, particularly during its irregular time signature shifts. These aren't gratuitous displays of technical prowess but rather serve the emotional narrative, creating unease and instability that mirrors the lyrical content.
The song's genesis during the pandemic lockdowns reveals itself through thematic preoccupations that extend beyond mere temporal documentation. DeAngelis, who has navigated OCD and anxiety disorders since childhood, channels personal struggle into universal statement. His Southern New Jersey roots inform a perspective that's both grounded and searching—the work of someone who has learned to transmute anxiety into art, to find clarity within chaos. This isn't therapy masquerading as songcraft; it's the genuine article, where hard-won wisdom becomes accessible through melody and metaphor.
"Livin' It" examines our collective tendency to romanticize the past whilst fearing the future—a decidedly human trait that takes on particular resonance given DeAngelis's longtime advocacy for climate change awareness and mental health. His work as a storm chaser, which has garnered national coverage, brings literal and figurative weight to the song's concern with an uncertain tomorrow. When he sings of a "fearful and unknown world," he's not trafficking in abstraction but speaking from the front lines of environmental crisis, someone who has witnessed firsthand the planet's volatile moods.
The Steve Howe influence on the mandolin work proves unmistakable to anyone familiar with Yes's more pastoral moments, though DeAngelis employs the instrument with greater restraint than Howe's sometimes baroque flourishes. The Gentle Giant comparison proves equally apt—those unpredictable tempo changes and angular melodic constructions bear the hallmarks of that band's gleefully intellectual approach to rock music. Yet the Cat Stevens touchstone prevents the track from disappearing entirely into prog-rock abstraction. That folky warmth, reminiscent of the *Mona Bone Jakon* era, provides crucial emotional accessibility, connecting the dots between personal confession and communal experience.
Tom Conran's work on the vocal tracking deserves particular commendation. He's captured a performance that contains multitudes—distress and contentment existing simultaneously, neither cancelling the other out but rather creating productive tension. DeAngelis's voice conveys both the weariness of experience and the stubborn persistence of hope, a difficult balance to strike without veering into either cynicism or saccharine optimism. His conviction, born from decades of turning "negative into positive" through faith and creative practice, lends authenticity that can't be manufactured.
The juxtaposition of the mandolin's brightness against heavier instrumentation creates a sonic push-pull that mirrors the song's thematic concerns. This reflects DeAngelis's stated mission—spreading positivity whilst acknowledging strife, finding light without denying darkness. When these elements collide, the result feels less like compromise than synthesis—a genuinely progressive approach to rock music that justifies the term's original meaning.
The production, split between Gradwell House Studio and Musicially Speaking Studios, achieves clarity without sterility. Each instrumental voice receives its moment whilst maintaining cohesion, allowing the listener to appreciate both the forest and the individual trees. The overall sound balances immediacy with depth, rewarding both casual listening and close analysis.
The spiritual resolution offered—finding hope through "a higher power"—might invite skepticism from some quarters, yet it flows organically from DeAngelis's worldview and artistic practice. This isn't evangelism but testimony, the sharing of what has worked for one person navigating treacherous internal and external weather. For an artist who has spent years studying storms both meteorological and psychological, faith becomes another instrument of survival, another way of reading the shifting skies.
"Livin' It" confirms DeAngelis as an artist willing to take genuine creative risks, trusting his audience to follow him through complex musical and thematic terrain. The track rewards that trust, offering a listening experience that reveals new dimensions with repeated exposure. It's the work of a mature artist at the height of his powers, supported by a crack band who understand his vision implicitly—music that confronts darkness whilst insisting, stubbornly and beautifully, on the possibility of dawn.