Khruangbin hone their identity with a blur of global influences
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So do a lot of people, including the folks who'll gather to see the band perform at
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Fueled in part by the song 'Maria También' appearing in the most recent season of 'The White Lotus,' the band's 2018 album 'Con Todo El Mundo' has amassed hundreds of millions of streams. Collaborations with modern soul singer
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Such collaborations helped point the way to Khruangbin's fifth album, last year's 'A La Sala.' The band formed as a three-piece in Houston (Johnson is still there, while guitarist Mark Speer and bassist Laura Lee Ochoa currently live on opposite coasts), yet 'A La Sala' manages to be their first record without any outside musicians. The drummer sees the album as a reset following their recent work with Bridges, Touré, and various remixers.
'When it came around to getting ready to record 'A La Sala,' we were all kind of longing to get back to working with just the three of us,' Johnson said. 'There's always just three people on stage. And [making 'A La Sala'] was, in a sense, us getting back in a room together, writing and sharing ideas and just kind of doing it in an insular fashion.'
But insular doesn't mean that Khruangbin's ears aren't open. If an Uber driver is listening to music, Johnson said he always asks what it is. 'Maybe you can put me on to something that I haven't heard,' he often says.
Drawing on music that nobody in Khruangbin has direct cultural connections to potentially opens the band up to accusations of appropriation (the band's name is even the Thai word for 'airplane'). To that, Johnson demurred, 'we always try to give honor and respect to all of the music and artists that we listen to and we highlight them.' What's more, he feels that the time is right for Khruangbin's pan-global gumbo.
'I think the Western music palate is really expanding,' he said. 'You're seeing it in the rise of these bands that are coming out of Korea, like BTS and Blackpink. These bands have huge followings, not just in Asia but in America.'
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He also points to the belated success of Nigerian artist Steve Monite's 1984 electrofunk track 'Only You,' recently heard in an American Express commercial. The song shows clear echoes of the clipped, reverbed sonics and arm's-length vocals that Khruangbin occasionally plays with.
Those vocals mean that Khruangbin isn't, strictly speaking, an instrumental band, but the way voices are used and produced – low and distant, like a mirage that merely signifies the notion of vocals – make the distinction functionally irrelevant.
'No one in the band really is self-professed as a singer, so to speak,' said Johnson. 'So when we do sing, we sing together, because we like the sound of a group vocal. But the drums, bass, guitar — that always comes first. And when we get to the end of the process and it feels like we need something else or something's missing, then vocals are usually a nice texture to play with. It's a fourth instrument.'
Accordingly, the band tends to invite listeners to glean whatever meaning they want out of their lyrics and titles. When confronted with a list of songs that suggest a thematic interest in the calendar and the passage of time – 'August 10,' 'Friday Morning,' 'May Ninth,' 'August Twelve,' possibly 'Fifteen Fifty-Three' – Johnson declined to elaborate, explain, or even agree.
'They all mean different things at different times,' he said. 'It depends on where we are in life when these songs get their titles. It's not really anything we try to give away.'
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But the drummer admits to having seen memes involving dates memorialized in Khruangbin titles.
'Maybe also that could attribute to the success of 'Con Todo El Mundo,' because a lot of people were born on August 10,' he said, referencing the track from their 2018 album. 'I don't know, or 'Friday Morning.''
KHRUANGBIN
With John Carroll Kirby. At The Stage at Suffolk Downs, 525 William F. McClellan Highway, Boston, Friday, June 27, 7 p.m. Tickets $84-$167.
Marc Hirsh can be reached at
or on Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social
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