> The night will still feel odd and "soulless" even with 2700k LED street lamps so long as they're still the absolute worst CRI.

What makes you say that the CRI causes the lack of soul? I'm not saying that you're wrong, but given that CRI is objectively better than it ever was now, why?

The sodium lamps we used previously had a CRI of 25-35. The absolute worst white LEDs we have have a CRI of at least 60.

Sodium vapor lamps didn't exactly have high CRI either