Fifteen years into their reign as Hamilton, Ontario’s most beloved rock export, Arkells essentially exist as two bands. There’s the brass-powered, E Street-schooled soul revue that’s become a fixture in Canada’s arenas and amphitheaters. And then there’s the pop-savvy studio scientists taking notes from contemporary hip-hop and R&B on eclectic, collaboration-heavy albums like 2021’s Blink Once and its 2022 sequel, Blink Twice. For their Apple Music Home Session, Arkells attempt to bridge those two worlds, by showing how the intricately produced Blink Twice tracks “Reckoning” and “Past Life” have evolved into hard-hitting live warhorses after a few months of stage exposure. “We tour with the Northern Soul Horns, so we wanted to include them in this session because they offer so much color and excitement to our live renditions,” lead vocalist Max Kerman tells Apple Music. “We’ve been playing all of these songs on tour, and they naturally take their own shape that sounds different from the studio version. Our performances are both more locked in and confident but also looser and less particular. Like, with ‘Reckoning,’ we were influenced by ‘Don’t Do It’ by The Band.” But while those recordings serve to fortify Arkells’ classic-rock roots, their cover-song selection—a punchy update of ABBA’s synth-disco standard “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”—reinforces the fact that, deep down, they’re just suckers for the perfect dance-pop jam. “It’d be pretty boring if we tried to replicate the exact arrangement as the original, so we play the song with a lot more muscle,” Kerman says. “We’ve been covering this during the encore and it goes off.”