Crispin Schroeder’s album Hear the Light presents this singer-songwriter-keyboardist’s polished yet still down-to-earth intermingling of pop, soul, jazz, gospel and New Orleans rhythm and blues.

Schroeder opens the ten-song project with “I Wasn’t Much of a Cool Kid,” a grooving soul number containing a stout horn chart and lyrics that espouse a healthy disrespect for conformity. For “Getting Hotter Getting Colder,” the tempo slows but the horns and Schroeder’s piano return amid lyrics about climate change and disunion.

“What will it take for us to truly see we are brothers, we are sisters in this human family?” Schroeder asks. “We’ve got to get together and heal this enmity.”

The lighter “One of the Good Ones” offers a feel-good mix of pop and R&B plus Mary Vigueira’s gospel-y backup singing. “Good Ones” suggests that Schroeder closely studied Van Morrison’s school of Celtic soul.

True to its title, the contemplative ballad “Dreaming and Walking” finds Schroeder playing blue notes at the piano, Brian Stoltz contributing soulful guitar fills and more gospel singing from Vigueira. The moody “Run Deep” and its extended trumpet solo from Brian Graber make it the album’s jazziest track. Teased via a playful piano intro, “Everyone Knows the King Has No Clothes” combines political commentary with jazz-infused pop of the kind that made Steely Dan famous. Remarkably, the latter song’s funky repetitive vocal line (“All the people on the left sing, all the people on the right sing”), combined with a Beatles-esque clavinet solo and sax solo never sound out of context.

Schroeder takes rhythmic departures with the reggae bounce of “To Love and Be Loved” and second-line drumming by Jermaine Hart in “Water Bears Don’t Care.” There’s more diversity via Dave Easley’s dreamy pedal steel guitar, most notably in “Fly on a Melody,” Schroder’s autobiographical song about falling in love with music.