The James Hunter Six return with Off The Fence, their first album for Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound, and it plays like a fresh chapter for one of modern soul’s most quietly consistent voices. James Hunter, hailed by MOJO as “The United Kingdom’s Greatest Soul Singer,” has spent more than three decades building a reputation on grit, groove, and sharply turned songs, and this new record finds him sounding both relaxed and locked in.

At its core, Off The Fence is a songwriter’s album. All twelve tracks were written by Hunter, and they carry his unmistakable blend of melodic ease and lyrical precision. That craft is no accident. “The way I write is what I call the Thesaurus method,” Hunter says. “I take the salient words describing the subject of the song and try to find as many synonyms for them as I can and then look for stuff to rhyme them with. As annoying as it is to admit it, there’s a lot of work goes into the phrasing.” That attention to detail shows up everywhere on the record, even when the music sounds effortless.

The first single, “A Sure Thing,” makes a strong case right out of the gate. Driven by a bright, twin-horn groove and a bounce pulled straight from Northern Soul, it’s built to get people moving. Hunter was chasing a very specific feeling. “I thought the title was a nice phrase and, musically, I was trying to get a bit of Northern Soul in there, which is where we’re trying to appeal to people’s feet,” he explains. “But lyrically, it’s just a different way of reflecting on somebody saying that they want to play things safe.” The result feels light on its feet but emotionally grounded, the kind of song that sticks without trying too hard.

Much of that comes down to the chemistry of the James Hunter Six themselves. With Myles Weeks on double bass, Rudy Albin Petschauer on drums, Andrew Kingslow on keys and percussion, and horn men Michael Buckley and Drew Vanderwinckel, the band moves as a single organism. They know when to push, when to pull back, and when to leave space for Hunter’s voice to do its work. The arrangements never feel crowded, even when the grooves hit hard.

One of the album’s most meaningful moments arrives on “Ain’t That A Trip,” a jump-blues burner featuring Van Morrison. The two go back to the early ’90s, when Hunter appeared on Morrison’s A Night In San Francisco and Days Like This, before Morrison returned the favor on Hunter’s Believe What I Say. This time around, Morrison is singing words Hunter wrote, something that didn’t quite happen three decades ago. “I tried to get Van to sing one of my songs 30 years ago, but I hadn’t really written anything he fancied at the time,” Hunter recalls. “Hearing him actually singing words I wrote gave me a real kick. It’s brilliant.”

Off The Fence also quietly marks a milestone, arriving roughly 40 years after James Hunter’s recording debut in the mid-’80s, yet it sounds rooted in the present, shaped by a songwriter who has spent decades refining his voice, phrasing, and feel.