Apache also reflects Neville’s social and spiritual concerns, marking only the second time in his 56-year recording career that he’s co-written nearly an entire album’s worth of material. The words are straight out of a poetry journal he began keeping in the 1970s, which more recently migrated to his iPhone. The music was written and produced by a pair of collaborators well known to enthusiasts of the retro-soul scene, Eric Krasno (guitarist for the groups Soulive and Rustic) and Dave Gutter (frontman for the Rustic Overtones). Together, they’ve come up with a modern/revivalist marvel harking back to a golden age that produced classics like Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On (which Neville just happens to reference in the eco-conscious “Fragile World”).

“I call it The Other Side of Aaron,” says the 75-year-old legend, offering an alternative album title, “because people know me from doing the ballads and New Orleans stuff. They’re getting another feel of Aaron” — music that touches on the mystic gumbo of “Yellow Moon” and sheer sweetness of “Everybody Plays the Fool” while diverging toward a third path we’ve never quite heard from Neville. And as much as he wants to surprise long-time fans with it, he says he’s “hoping that a lot of other people that might not even know me get turned on to it.” Which is far from unimaginable: It’s easy to picture a 20-year-old listening to the tracks that feature the Dap-King horns and wondering who this new guy is who’s following in the tradition of Amy Winehouse.