Nathaniel Rateliff is a complete throwback. Everything from his General Burnside-like beard to his favorite liquor—whiskey, preferably Old Grand-Dad on the rocks or with soda water—screams that he wasn’t quite made for these times. On his latest offering and his first with his new band The Night Sweats, Rateliff offers a surprising break from his indie-folk past. Throughout Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, he skyrockets to the blues/soul/ rockabilly mélange of Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen album and Van Morrison’s patented blue-eyed soul sound, ultimately landing in a Blues Brothers-style revue.

The 36-year-old musician recorded Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, which arrived on August 21 via Stax, with producer Richard Swift (Foxygen, Damien Jurado, Guster) at his Cottage Grove studio, a couple of hours south of Portland, Ore. Rateliff says their main criterion was authenticity. “I didn’t want to come across as another guy doing R&B/soul because that’s the thing to do. It might look that way, but it’s not,” he says with a laugh.

For Rateliff, the songwriting process was a way to unburden his soul. He admits that “these songs are about the struggles I’ve had in my life—drinking too much, that kind of crap. And then, the relationships we all have. I’m not a great communicator in my personal life, so it’s funny to be writing songs that say the things that I’m not very good at saying.” On the cling-clanging, downtempo “Howling At Nothing,” reminiscent of Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away,” Rateliff remembers a frenzied night of dancing.

The centerpiece of the album, though, is “S.O.B.” The track finds Rateliff serving as the orator. But instead of instilling virtues traditional of a sermon, he exclaims, “Son of a bitch/ give me a drink/ Won’t more night/ This can’t be me/ Son of a bitch/ If I can’t get clean/ I’m gonna drink my life away,” while a cascade of brass instrumentation mark the peak of a bar dance party.

Despite an aggressive tour that will bring his seven-piece around the United States until right before Thanksgiving, Rateliff is already trying to write more material, which he says keeps his band happy. “The other night, we went into some weird, unrehearsed jam session,” he says. “Not necessarily jamband stuff, but just rock and roll.”