Morado Vinyl Exclusively Available at Barnes & Noble.
Khruangbin
has always been multilingual, weaving far-flung musical languages like East Asian surf rock, Persian funk, and Jamaican dub into mellifluous harmony. But on its third album, it's finally speaking out loud.
Mordechai
features vocals prominently on nearly every song, a first for the mostly instrumental band. It's a shift that rewards the risk, reorienting
's transportive sound toward a new sense of emotional directness, without losing the spirit of nomadic wandering that's always defined it. And it all started with them coming home.
By the summer of 2019, the Houston group -- bassist
Laura Lee Ochoa
, guitarist
Mark Speer
, drummer
DJ Johnson
-- had been on tour for nearly three-and-a-half years, playing to audiences across North and South America, Europe, and Southeast Asia behind its acclaimed albums
The Universe Smiles Upon You
and
Con Todo el Mundo
. They returned to their farmhouse studio in Burton, Texas, ready to begin work on their third album. But they were also determined to slow down, to take their time and luxuriate in building something together.
Musically, the band's ever-restless ear saw it pulling reference points from Pakistan, Korea, and West Africa, incorporating strains of Indian chanting boxes and Congolese syncopated guitar. But more than anything, the album became a celebration of Houston, the eclectic city that had nurtured them, and a cultural nexus where you can check out country and zydeco, trap rap, or avant-garde opera on any given night.
In those years away from home,
's members often felt like they were swimming underwater, unsure of where they were going or why they were going there. But
leads them gently back to the surface, allowing them to take a breath, look around, and find themselves again. It is a snapshot taken along a larger journey -- a moment all the more beautiful for its impermanence. And it's a memory to revisit again and again, speaking to us now more clearly than ever.