Have you heard Snarky Puppy’s We Like It Here?

While the album does not deal with a narrative or idea that unfolds through lyrics, its conceptual basis is clear. Snarky Puppy is a group that values collaboration, and capturing a moment in the group’s life in the most minute way possible.

The album is chock-full of Snarky Puppy signatures that you can hear on almost every song. Blistering, improvised solos? Check. Drum grooves that are both complicated and get you moving? Check. A string section to lend texture to compositions? Check. Confusing, seemingly meaningless names for compositions? Check.

The first song on the album, “Shofukan”, sets the tone for what will come in those that follow. The song sees nearly 20 musicians working together to create textures and movements in the music all the while keeping the groove going. For this album, and indeed many Snarky Puppy albums, quiet and introspective moments are almost always followed by outbursts of energy. The song exemplifies that approach and serves as foreshadowing for songs that follow like “Sleeper” or “Outlier”.

It is overwhelmingly clear that the album simply refuses to let the listener catch their breath. Song to song, each member’s virtuosity is on full display. There is a rehearsed, masterful and precise manner of executing each composition’s relentless groove but also a proclivity for unchained and expressive solos. Nowhere is this more clear than on keyboard player Cory Henry’s solo on “Lingus”.

On “Lingus”, Henry unfurls a tapestry of intricately woven musical ideas. From the opening chords to the blazingly fast phrases of the end, his solo is far and away one of the most interesting on Snarky Puppy’s catalogue. Moments like these are not written into the score for any compositions. It is exactly this sort of moment that makes the group’s live recording approach interesting.

Each time a song is performed live, it changes a little depending on a myriad of things like the performer’s mood, energy, and even the performance’s location. We Like It Here was born out of the primarily US-based group’s desire to record an album in Europe. The recordings from Utrecht in the Netherlands capture superb improvisation, and the group’s idiosyncrasies while still preserving the core ideas behind the composition.

Snarky Puppy may not be a group that can be easily defined, but We Like It Here is a landmark album in contemporary jazz. It is a shining display of skill, musicianship, and wordless self-expression that even Snarky Puppy have not yet been able to top.