Ivan Neville, son of Aaron Neville, has been ubiquitous in New Orleans since the early '80s, and leads Dumpstaphunk, a jam-centric funk band. Touch My Soul is only his fifth solo album since 1988, and it's his first in 20 years. Unsurprisingly, much of it represents his deep, lifelong love of New Orleans. His songs crisscross the Crescent City's musical traditions from second line funk and R&B to blues, rock, and jazz. Alongside his live band, he enlists guests from his long career, including his father, uncle Cyrille Neville, Bonnie Raitt, Trombone Shorty, David Shaw, Michael McDonald, Doyle Bramhall II, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band's octogenarian saxophonist Charlie Gabriel. Neville built these songs from piano sketches created at home in the portrait photo-filled sunroom of his uptown NOLA home. Furthermore, his drum loops, also plotted there, were inspired by Sly Stone's Fresh, a seminal album when he was a teen. Opening single "Hey All Together" commences with his piano, a drum loop, and brass playing a Beatlesque (think Abbey Road) production with a hooky rock melody colored by electronics, a fat, warm bassline, and the chorus vocals of his dad, Raitt, McDonald, Trombone Shorty, and Shaw. Neville's synthed brass fills underscore his sung lines, and they're infectious. "Greatest Place on Earth" offers a NOLA second line street groove as the lyrics celebrate the city's food, music, and culture. As if he needed it, he also gets killer syncopated beats from uncle Cyrille and swinging horns from Gabriel and Trombone Shorty. Other highlights include the electrified keyboard, drum, and bass funk of "Dance Music Love." The filthy clavinet vamp is underscored by frenetic percussion loops, a woolly bass line, and Bramhall's scorching guitar leads. The title track is a majestic ballad that underscores Neville's gratitude for his growth as a father, as an artist, and as a man. The hip "Stand for Something" borrows inspiration and a horn strategy from Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke." The interplay between vocals, polyrhythms, keys, and horns will get everybody onto the dancefloor. "Blessed" is a gospel-inflected hymn with carefully, unobtrusively layered instrumentation that frames a resonant vocal before shifting into a soul tune. The cover of Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place" is wildly celebratory and full of zigzagging keyboards, swaying horns, chunky bass, and dirty drums that frame Neville and his singers, elevating the arrangement in the process. Closer "Beautiful Tears" is an instrumental piano ballad; it cuts across Neville's stylistic and genre chops, revealing him to be a true scion of the NOLA piano tradition that descends from Huey Smith, Professor Longhair, James Booker, and Dr. John. Touch My Soul offers the kind of focused, creative evolution and artistic quality that Ivan Neville's earlier records only hinted at. ~ Thom Jurek