Snarky Puppy’s ninth album—the last of five for Ropeadope Records before they launched their own GroundUP imprint—takes a long and winding path before ending up at “Lingus”, easily one of the Grammy-winning band’s landmark achievements and the representative cut par excellence. Cory Henry’s jaw-dropping keyboard solo is central, informed by ’70s fusion à la Chick Corea but endowed with a harmonic logic and surging momentum that mark it as highly individual (Henry would leave the group before Immigrance dropped in early 2019). There’s a studio audience, never shy with hearty applause, which lends We Like It Here the ambiance of a live show, making the band’s clarity of execution all the more striking. The music, except “Sleeper” and “Outlier,” is by bassist and founder Michael League (he co-wrote “Jambone” with guitarist Bob Lanzetti). Amid the high virtuosity and technical dazzle is a layer of dirt, with crushing Moog bass parts and raw guitars, airtight horn section parts and a soulful bedrock groove gained from experience playing actual church gigs in the mid-’00s. More rigorous than a jam band, more poppy and eclectic than a jazz ensemble, Snarky Puppy has always set its own genre-defying terms, never more so than on We Like It Here.