When I first heard “If This Ain’t Love (Don’t Know What Is)” by Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators, it was on a soul music sampler from Light in the Attic Records with likes of Jamaican organist Jackie Mittoo. I was knocked out by it and assumed it was a rare soul single from the late 1960s excavated by some crate digger looking for rare groove or Northern soul tracks. It turns out the music is new, made by Willis—a Brooklynite who sang with Curtis Mayfield and the Brand New Heavies—and a Finnish band dedicated to traditional soul music. Keep Reaching Up, the album the song comes from, sounds like 1973 or so come to life, and it’s excellent.

The production is the slight of hand here, emulating the sound of the sort of budget-priced studios where many regional soul sides of the day were cut. The band gets it right too, though, catching that moment when soul walked the line between the urban and the urbane and between pop and funk. Almost everything here is catchy, and instead of playing soul diva, Willis sings as a proud sister with a social conscience who’d like nothing more than to find a guy and fall in love. It’s all a tricky balance, and Keep Reaching Up manages to stay on the right side at every turn.