Few would have predicted that one of the biggest alt-rock breakthroughs of the last decade would be a mostly instrumental trio from Houston with a name that seems dauntingly difficult to pronounce. Yet out of all the many surprises of the last ten years, the success of Khruangbin (pronounced “KRUNG-bin”) has indeed overcome the odds, becoming a festival and critics’ favorite with a wide fan base – fellow Houston native Travis Scott even namechecked them in an interview with Variety a few years back.
The group’s intricate and low-key sound, based around Mark Speer’s effortlessly imaginative guitar playing, is so distinctive that changing the approach would seem like a challenge, but the band has mixed things up with every release, introducing more vocals on their last group album, 2020’s “Mordechai,” and releasing collaborative outings with Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré as well as Texan colleague Leon Bridges in the years since.
And they’ve changed the approach again for “A La Sala,” dialing back the vocals and making the grooves and sound even more low-key, even for a group that’s never very loud and rarely intense. “Emotionally there was a desire to get back to square one between the three of us, to where we came from – in sonics and in feeling,” bassist Laura Lee Ochoa says in the press notes, and that intimacy comes across in the music. “Farolim de Felgueiras” and the almost church-like “Caja de la Sala” are just guitar and synth, and the closing “Les Petits Gris” features spare guitar and bass notes over simple piano chords.
But there’s no shortage of the unmistakable sound that brought the group so many fans in the first place. All three are excellent musicians, but Spear is a marvel, playing with a fluid style that incorporates multiple influences, from rock to African to blues to funk to Duane Eddy twang, with an innate sense of melody that carries the entire band. Yet he never overplays — on “A Love International,” he plays the same simple figure throughout the entire song, elaborating on it not with more notes or countermelodies but by changing the inflections and emphasis and phrasing – the song builds in urgency dramatically toward the end but it’s hard to tell exactly what he’s doing to make that happen.
Such is the art of Khruangbin. What’s next? An album with Travis Scott or Beyonce or Kamasi Washington? Whatever it is, we’ll be here for it.