Caveat emptor: this is not the Bobby Purify of James and Bobby Purify, the mid-’60s soul duo best known for the classic ’66 ballad “I’m Your Puppet.” Well, not quite. This Bobby was one of three to bear the moniker, and this particular Purify (real name: Ben Moore) joined after the duo’s greatest successes. However, Ben/Bobby has an impressive southern-soul resume despite all that, having also been a member of the Tams, another duo, Ben and Spence, and a gospel singer authentic enough to have garnered a Grammy nomination in the early ’80s.

But a rose by any other name would smell as sweet given the quality of Better To Have It, this Bobby’s re-emergence into the soul limelight. With legendary producer/songwriter Dan Penn behind the boards and both the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and the Memphis Horns sessionmen, this’d be an easy sell even if the songs were substandard. Thank God, they aren’t—written by Penn, Malaco vet Carson Whitsett and Memphis bluesman Bucky Lindsey, they specialize in very simple yet utterly heartfelt pledges of devotion, ones that, in the classic soul tradition, praise God in function and lament women in form.

It’s that mixture of the sacred and the secular which finds perfect backdrop in Whitsett and Penn’s touching string arrangements, the sheer poetry of the horns, and the completely unveiled churchiness of his vocal backup. Purify, for his part, seems to realize this is the record of his career, and he sings just so, mining every bit of drama in the songs’ weary/blessed determination. Listen to the heartbreaking way he breaks up the lines of the title opener: “I know you don’t want me / It’s clear. You just want me / out of here.” Then there’s the half-spoken verses on the closing “Only In America,” which moves past cheap sentiment and jingoistic button-pushing to paint a portrait where the end result of democracy is a chance to “place myself in the service of man.” As simultaneously authoritative and redemptive as a New Testament book, Bobby Purify’s latest is more than just a comeback for someone we didn’t know all that well: it’s a high-water mark for soul in a largely soulless decade.