The latest release by Bahamas, aka Afie Jurvanen, is an album that drips with what makes those albums so addictive: consummate musicianship, high concepts and tons of analog warmth. Jurvanen is a Canadian guitarist and songwriter who has worked in the past with Feist, Jack Johnson and the Weather Station.

With Earthtones, Jurvanen has nearly perfected a writing, production and mixing process with California producer Robbie Lackritz ever since the first Bahamas album, Barchords, in 2012. Lackritz and Jurvanen are great admirers of George Martin, Roy Halee and other producers known for collaborating closely with artists to create sounds that are gripping and immediately identifiable.

The distinctively funky, blue-eyed soul vibe heard on Earthtones is created by the combination of Jurvanen’s tube-amplified Fender and Silvertone guitars and a series of sensual, interweaving female backing choruses reminiscent of Lou Reed’s "Take a Walk on the Wild Side." The result sounds like Steely Dan, Al Green and Prince had a mind meld. Cue up tracks like "Way With Words" and "Everything to Everyone" at your next party and get ready for lots of "Who is this?"

The album’s cover and gatefold photo layout resemble a Ralph Lauren ad; it’s all in keeping with Jurvanen’s ironic humor. Like the cover, Jurvanen’s music is highly polished, but deeper listening reveals complex layers and brutally honest vulnerability just beneath the calculated surface. On "Opening Act," Jurvanen uses the life of a struggling B-list artist as a metaphor to explore rejection in romantic relationships. On other songs, he’s willing to tangle with prickly subjects like white privilege and dead-beat dads.

For these sessions, Lackritz encouraged Jurvanen to enlist the help of bassist Pino Palladino and drummer James Gadson. Palladino and Gadson were chosen for their work on D’Angelo’s neo-soul masterpiece Black Messiah. It’s worth noting that Gadson’s drumming is also on dozens of the '70s' very best soul and funk records as well as hundreds of outstanding pop albums like Beck’s Sea Change and Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die.

Lackritz’s passion for vintage analog equipment is just one reason the sonics on Earthtones stand out in a sea of edgy, compressed pop recordings. In a recent e-mail, Lackritz told me that the subterranean bass notes on Earthtones made it a challenge to produce a worthy vinyl version of the new record. "We worked especially hard on the vinyl -- Philip Shaw Bova, the mastering engineer, and I [used] lower level mixes for the vinyl audio, so there is significantly more dynamic range, but because there is so much low end on the record we actually had to alter the mixes in a few instances." Based upon my extended listening sessions, Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering did a superb job of cutting the lacquers, and Ontario’s Precision Record Pressing has delivered the results on utterly quiet 180-gram vinyl.