“I am a brown man/My skin ain’t white,” Sebastian Gaskin declares. “They could pull me from the wreckage and still shoot me in the light.” That line appears on “Brown Man,” a stark, bluesy ballad that was written in response to the 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of police. The song’s sobering sentiment also reflects Gaskin’s experience as a Tataskweyak Cree Nation member navigating their way through contemporary Canadian society. But they follow that harrowing lyric with a more direct emotional appeal—“I’m not a savage/Just a human being who needs to heal from the heartache and the sadness”—that speaks to Gaskin’s ultimate mission as an artist: to translate personal pain into universal affirmations. LOVECHILD is a testament to Gaskin’s skills as a savvy, crowd-pleasing pop synthesist, as they fuse late-night R&B devotionals with traditional chants (“Medicine”) while basking in The Weeknd’s blinding lights (“Cherie Amour”) and channeling Bon Iver’s soft-focus spirituals (“I Don’t Wanna Feel Anymore”). But no matter what form they take, Gaskin’s songs are united by their affable sincerity and therapeutic intent: When they sing, “You make me feel safe” on the sauntering old-school soul serenade “Safe,” the feeling is mutual.