It has become almost gauche to admit that you love Khruangbin. The Texas trio, formed in 2010 in Houston by drummer Donald Johnson and guitarists Mark Speer and Laura Lee, have become so popular that to say you love them is almost like saying you love pizza. Except that once upon a time, this particular pizza was very niche – a happy secret among a handful of people in-the-know. Not me, I hasten to add. I first came across them in 2018 when they appeared on the Maribou State track, Feel Good.
From the beginning, Khruangbin’s upward trajectory was contingent on them staying true to their roots: chill, at times funky psychedelic rock magpieing from world music. Their name means ‘airplane’ in Thai; the bandmates initially bonded over a shared love of Afghan instruments; their 2018 album, the Spanish-titled Con Todo El Mundo, was inspired by Middle Eastern funk and the Iranian singer, Googoosh. I realise this sentence makes them sound like the sort of VAPs (Very Annoying People) you might meet at an East London dinner party. And perhaps they are. But they make such gorgeous music – trippy, soulful, exquisitely produced – that it is very hard not to like them.
Last week, Khruangbin put on three back-to-back shows to thousands of adoring fans at the Eventim Apollo, many paying over £100 for a ticket. Playing through their latest album, A La Sala – arguably their best work so far – it frequently felt like you might be watching the best band in the world.
With billions of Spotify streams, it’s hard to wrap one’s head around the fact that many still haven’t heard of Khruangbin, when in reality they’ve almost definitely heard their music – on Instagram reels posted by food and travel accounts and in artisan coffee shops the world over. But the band itself remains elusive. It’s part of what makes them so compelling.
Khruangbin are almost a case study for the ironies of stardom in the streaming era. You can make instantly recognisable, world-famous music without anyone knowing who you are or what you look like. Khruangbin’s Spotify numbers suggest far more than just a cult following, yet I can’t keep count of the number of times I’ve overheard a guy chatting someone up at a house party by asking them if they’ve heard of “this little known band from Texas I love”. People love to feel like they own Khruangbin. At Friday night’s concert, I was asked not once but twice by different fifty-somethings what I, a 26-year-old, could possibly be doing here; in their mind, this was their space.
No doubt, the streaming gods have made Khruangbin more popular than they ever planned to be; and yet they’ve never forced them to sell out, either. Speer and Johnson’s shared background playing in church bands continues to shine through not just on stage but in the eccentricities and hopefulness of the Khruangbin sound. Call it liturgical, as one journalist did; or simply merry. Guy Metter, an artist known for the electronic music project Hey Lu, says the secret to Khruangbin’s massive appeal is how joyful their music is. “They don’t shy away from major keys and optimism,” he explains, “which is something non-pop artists often feel they have to do.”
By historic commercial standards, Khruangbin are somewhat below-bar: their highest charting hit, Texas Sun – featuring longtime collaborator Leon Bridges – reached the top 20 of the US rock charts and nowhere near the top 100 on Billboard. Their most obvious commercial success has been in New Zealand, where the band are performing two shows in February. Still, they’re no number-oners there either. In many ways, it is an enviable position, with few of the negative trappings of fame and all the benefits of fortune.
And so to Friday night, the sold-out finale of Khruangbin’s three-night stint in the capital. I have never seen a band more comfortable; almost passive in their movements and seductions of the crowd. There were no how are you doings, no introductions, no fluff – just two guitars, the drums and the occasional lyric, sung or whispered into a standing mic. They opened with the sultry one-two punch of Fifteen Fifty-Three and May Ninth: slow, bass-heavy tracks that conjure up images of desert moons and Arizonan landscapes. As the evening progressed, they weaved more of their classics into the set (Pelota, Till We Won’t Forget), with several interludes leaving room for guitar solos so impressive, my companion asked: “Did Khruangbin, like, invent the guitar?” Honestly, they might as well have.
Speer and Lee, who have been performing together for close to two decades (including several years pre-Khruangbin) have a chemistry unlike any other I’ve seen on stage. They moved in complete misstep, yet somehow still in harmony, and exuded such suppleness you couldn’t help but wonder if they might have been dancers in a past life. Over the decades, they have created a whole new soundsystem for their instrument (Lee hasn’t changed the strings of her bass guitar since 2012): one that’s been mimed but never repeated by everyone from Tame Impala to Hermanos Guttierez. Johnson is also a master of his instrument, with a touch so light on the drums even his more deliberate thuds can feel gentle.
One cannot talk about the concert without talking about its set design: a sand-coloured staircase, five steps tall, spanning nearly the entirety of the stage, with a raised platform in the corner for Johnson (along with moody lighting and lots of dry ice). It looked like something out of a National Theatre production, with fake windows mimicking A La Sala’s album art: a cloudy blue sky that turned dark mid-set for a pyrotechnic interlude where the music gave way to a storm. It was a breathtaking moment of stage production, befitting Khruangbin’s biggest show to date.
The band kept their funkiest tunes for the encore: Time (You & I) and their debut album’s showstopper, People Everywhere (Still Alive). By then, everyone in the upper rows had got up and out of their seats: entire families swinging their hips and throwing their limbs around as Speer dished up one final guitar solo. It was a delirious, euphoric ending to one of the most beautiful concerts I’ve ever attended.
