Happily borrowing elements from garage rock, psychedelic singer/songwriters, soft funk, and '70s rock radio hooks, singer and multi-instrumentalist Michael Rault has crafted a sound that's comforting without being a museum piece. His early records, like the 2012 EP Whirlpool, showed off some tough garage chops, but as he grew older, the balance shifted to the kind of sweetly lilting ballads one might hear on a Paul McCartney solo album. Working with the Daptone Records crew, he gave these introspective songs a tight and snappy underpinning on records like 2018's It's a New Day Tonight and 2022's Michael Rault that balance the retro with the up-to-date quite nicely.