Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats

★★★★ The Future

STAX. CD/DL/LP

R&B, gospel and soul man’s third album with the Night Sweats, his seventh overall. Veering between introspective solo material and more expansive band work, Nathaniel Rateliff hardly seemed like the next big thing as he toiled through Colorado’s bars for a decade. Then, in 2015, his first Night Sweats album sold over a million. That has allowed him to establish a niche for the kind of gospel- and countryinflected soul that Shelby Lynne almost broke through with. Here, Jenny Lewis is on backing vocals as he covers old bases with new fervour, but there’s so much happening, so much detail that it feels like a giant leap forwards. The apocalyptic, echo-drenched opening title track finds Rateliff singing with the fingerpointing conviction of born again-era Bob Dylan as he berates “your blind ignorance”, but Survivor has a cascading chorus that could have graced an En Vogue hit, while Lover Don’t gallops along like peak period Motown. And that’s only the start of it