The Black Lillies’ fourth album opens with a big surprise: a funky drumbeat and swampy guitar riff straight out of Memphis or New Orleans that turns into an extended R&B-style juke-joint jam, complete with blasting horn section. That song, the title track to the brand-new Hard to Please, is a dramatic departure from anything the band has released before, and it’s followed by several other unexpected forays into R&B, soul, and rock ’n’ roll—enough, in fact, to count the new album as a whole as a surprising turn, especially for a band at a pivotal point in its career.