There’s poetic justice to the title of the last album Buffett completed before his death at 76 from skin cancer on the Friday before Labor Day 2023. It’s a saying his grandfather once used to describe a good nap, a perfect closing sentiment from the bard of American leisure and all those who aspire to it. The King of the Parrotheads lived many lives over the course of his 50-odd-year career (Bourbon Street busker, Key West castaway, Margaritaville tycoon), throughout which his sunny demeanour was a constant. And though he’d managed to turn his beach bum lifestyle into a billion-dollar brand, his position never wavered: A hard day’s work paled in comparison to one spent with a fishing pole in one hand and a beer in the other. Buffett generally stuck to light-hearted themes in his later years, but the songs on Equal Strain, his 32nd studio album, are cosmic in his own breezy way: “Galaxies and nautilus shells look the same to me/So ask yourself this question: How couldn’t it be?” he wonders in harmony with the Beninese singer Angelique Kidjo on “Ti Punch Café”, a dream of the rum bars of the French Caribbean. He imagines an even more exotic paradise on “Nobody Works on Friday”, a rousing rebuff of the 40-hour work week, and sneaks in a few final digs on influencers on “Portugal or PEI”. The title track, a country ballad, feels like a reprise to “The Captain and the Kid”, a standout from his 1970 debut, written in his grandfather’s memory. In that song, a young Buffett had watched the former sailor struggle to adjust to the equilibrium of old age; 53 years later, he recalls his grandfather’s advice: “I didn’t always see the wisdom at the time, but I’m older now.” It’s the same sense of gentle acceptance that drives “Bubbles Up”, a song that Paul McCartney called Buffett’s best vocal performance ever. (McCartney played bass on “My Gummie Just Kicked In”, a song inspired by a particularly hazy dinner shared by the musicians and their wives.) The rootsy slow-burner was co-written by Will Kimbrough, a fellow Mobile, Alabama, native and long-time Buffett collaborator, who devised its 3/4 time signature as a tribute to Buffett’s fourth album, Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. Its quintessentially Buffettian theme comes from a tried-and-true scuba technique: To orient yourself in an emergency, follow the direction of the bubbles. “Let’s pop a cork to the rough and the right/To the bright blazing days and the sweet starry nights,” Buffett sings peacefully in his affable drawl, a coda to a life lived about as good as you could ask for. “There is light up above, and joy, there’s always enough.”