The death of guitarist Chuck Loeb in 2017 was a setback not just for the smooth-jazz supergroup Jazz Funk Soul, which he founded, but for jazz guitar as a whole. It was a gesture of respect and perseverance for keyboardist Jeff Lorber and saxophonist Everette Harp to carry on with a third album, featuring Paul Jackson Jr. in Loeb’s place. Life and Times is airtight in terms of groove and production, melodic to the hilt, with a stylistic bent aptly summed up in the band’s name. Jackson, who played on Thriller and countless other major pop landmarks, is renowned as an impossibly tasty and understated rhythm guitar hand, but his crisp and blazing leads on Life and Times might be some of the most representative and three-dimensional examples of his playing on record. Loeb was warmer and rounder overall in tone; Jackson is brighter, with a bit more rock rising to the surface. But that fluid and contemporary aesthetic, anchored in blues- and bebop-tinged phraseology, forms a common and uninterrupted thread.