On The Sting Cheese Incident’s first new studio album in nine years, they truly sound like they’ve found a comfortable, collaborative groove. Song in My Head comes off like a live iteration of the band, and maybe that’s because it’s loaded with 10 tight-sounding, jam-ready songs that they’ve road-tested but never put to tape before. They brought in Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison to provide an outside production perspective and help massage the tracks. Each musician’s creativity, voice and flavor shines through.

Song in My Head runs the emotional and stylistic gamut from the joyful, rolling newgrass of Bill Nershi’s “Colorado Bluebird Sky” to the urgency and searching of Michael Kang’s Latin-dosed “Betray The Dark” to the nimble energy of “Rosie.” “Let’s Go Outside” features Kyle Hollingsworth’s bouncy, synthy fingerprints, while Keith Moseley takes the lead on “Struggling Angel,” a thoughtful reflection about a friend who’s “off to find your place in the eternal dance.” Hollingsworth’s calypso-tinged key flourishes on “Can’t Wait Another Day” echo the positive SCI ethos, and our time and place in the universe with its “round and round we go.” The anthemic and spacey funk of closer “Colliding” gives Jason Hann and Michael Travis time to shine with its electronic-influenced jam and dancey, percussive beats. We’re left with the band singing “a simple song” at the end with the emphatic message of “everywhere, we’re all colliding, come together, redefine it,” that Cheese has been preaching and celebrating now for 20 years.