Though it wasn’t planned that way, Bruce Hornsby’s Indigo Park will forever be home to one of Bob Weir final recording sessions and the first posthumous studio recording from the late Grateful Dead co-founder, who died in January. 

That’s just the way it is. 

With words by Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, “Might as Well be Me, Florinda” is seven minutes of swaggering jazz-blues full of tempo shifts, muted horns, synth percussion and Blake Mills’ wah-wah guitar and harmony vocals supporting Hornsby and Weir, who share co-leads. In doing so, the former bandmates reveal Hunter’s unmistakable presence with such lines as: “Make my bed on the asphalt/cast-iron pillow for my head/the end of the world was not my fault/no matter what anybody said.”

As the ninth of 10 numbers, “Florinda” sets up Indigo Park to end as it began, with a sonic nod to the adventurous-yet-accessible sound of 1993’s Harbor Lights, Hornsby’s first post-Range and post-Grateful solo album. Like the opening title track, “Take a Light Strain” encourages listeners to be less serious and look out for the important things. 

“In the end, life is enough,” Hornsby sings with a mix of satisfaction and resignation on “Indigo Park,” as he kicks off an album that finds him musically restless and, at 71, wrestling with mortality. 

Never one to stand still, Hornsby experiments with hip-hop beats, half-spoken vocal deliveries and processing that leaves Bonnie Raitt’s voice unrecognizable on “Ecstatic,” on which Hornsby acts as basketball cheerleader, exclaiming: “You fouled/you did it/raise your hand/admit it!” 

Indigo Park is not what many people might expect from Hornsby. Those who’ve been paying attention, however, know the unexpected is the only thing to reasonably expect from Hornsby.