From the start, Eli Paperboy Reed has specialized in soul like they used to make back in the good old days, but being a revivalist only goes so far. Sooner or later, revivalists hit their glass ceiling, left with only two paths forward: either grind out a living on a blues circuit or place all their chits on a crossover. Reed opts for the latter on Nights Like This, his first album for Warner that also, for most intents and purposes, functions as a reboot of his entire career. He replaces his Stax foundation with a stack of Motown 7s that are indeed more welcoming to his new style, a fashion heavily indebted to the productions of Mark Ronson, particularly his sharp neo-soul for Amy Winehouse. At times, Nights Like This quite explicitly draws connections between Ronson and Reed — Shock to the System rides a Tamla bounce that's quite similar to Valerie — but Reed also shows an awareness for sounds that have reached the charts in the 2010s. Lonely Word opens with a desolate piano plonk that's a dead-ringer for Katy Perry's Roar, but Reed and his chief collaborator Ryan Spaker generally don't dive head-first into complete crossover territory (with its iciness, it's reminiscent of a warmer Ryan Tedder). He still favors tightly written, cannily structured songs, but this time favoring aggressively friendly melodies and R&B stomps to signifiers of authenticity, and that craftsmanship is why his music is appealing whether dressed in thrift-store suits or modern threads. Underneath all this gloss and glitz — and, to be sure, there is a lot of razzle-dazzle here, enough so that it may alienate some fans of his earlier, simpler material — Reed remains the same sharp, skillful soulman, one whose good taste and craft are hard to resist.