Lenny McDaniel‘s fourth CD is urban music to the nth degree: slick (but not overly so), clean, streamlined, and filled with the kind of confidence that comes from a thick groove and the kind of courage that you usually get from a boilermaker or six. It’s a sound born of the street, with jazz and soul and electric blues and funk all getting along like strangers at happy hour.

Despite his critical and commercial breakthrough with 1997’s Tired Angels, McDaniel is still better known for his songwriting ability than anything else, but The Blues Side should fix all that.

McDaniel is handling more of the instrumentation than ever before, his production is absolutely gorgeous, and his smooth and utterly unpretentious vocals have matured into a cross between any number of blues basso profundos and the facility of a Deltafied Van Morrison.

Of course, his songcraft remains intact. “Permanently Halloween’s” depiction of a Jenny Jones’ makeover candidate is hilarious, “Good People” is a rousing testament to just that, the you’re-gonna-need-me blue dream of “It’s Just Not Right’ contains a pain that’s palpable, and “Better Late Than Never” is the hit he’s been deserving for years.

The obligatory bar-band set closer, ”I’m Leavin”’, is less like a rote exercise than a flexing of muscle; McDaniel executes a scorched-earth campaign with both his six-string leads and the nasty storm of his Hammond B-3. And when the road-weary ennui of “The Slow Nights (that kill you)” parts for the “Southern Rain,” the cleansing is so complete that you can practically hear the storm all around you.

Oh, wait, the storm sounds are on the CD. No matter. You won’t have reality blurred this nicely again for a while.