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. 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. And those same nostalgic wisps curl all around “Connaissais De Face,” a Middle Eastern vamp by way of Serge Gainsbourg that evokes all the ruminative romance of a French New Wave film, layered with its own tender dialogue of reminiscence. It’s there, too, in “Dearest Alfred,” which was inspired by a trove of letters Ochoa’s grandfather wrote to his twin brother, as well as “If There Is No Question,” a metaphysical devotional (by way of Marvin Gaye) that harkens back to Johnson and Speer’s earliest days in a church band. Again and again the songs play on those notions, from the sun-dappled disco of lead single “Time (You And I)”-which evinces the feeling of a festival winding down to its final blowout hours-to the lilting “So We Won’t Forget,” which finds Ochoa filling her apartment with memories she’s scrawled on Post-Its to prevent them slipping away. And letting those words ring out gave Khruangbin’s cavernous music a new thematic depth.Ĭhief among those themes is memory-holding onto it, letting it go, naming it before it disappears. Khruangbin had worked with lyrics before: the love-letter poetry of “Friday Morning,” the ghosts of conversations gone by in “Cómo Te Quiero.” But this time Ochoa had found she had something to say-and so did the songs. As Khruangbin began putting together the songs that would make up the next record, discovering in them spaces it seemed like only vocals could fill, they turned to those notebooks. Ochoa’s rejuvenation found its expression in words-hundreds of pages’ worth, which she’d filled over a self-imposed day of silence. She emerged feeling liberated, grateful for what her friend had shown her. In that instant, Laura Lee Ochoa was reborn.
LAURA LEE KHRUANGBIN AGE FULL
As she did, he screamed her name-her full name, the one she’d recently taken from her grandfather. When they reached the waterfall at last, Lee’s friend urged her to jump, a leap she likens to a baptism. That day, as they’d all made their way toward the distant promise of a waterfall, Lee had felt a dawning clarity about the importance of appreciating the journey, rather than rushing headlong toward the next destination-something she’d almost lost sight of during the band’s whirlwind rise. It’s a lesson Lee had recently learned with the help of a new friend, a near-stranger who had reached out when she was feeling particularly unmoored, inviting her to come hiking with his family. But they were also determined to slow down, to take their time and luxuriate in building something together. They returned to their farmhouse studio in Burton, Texas, ready to begin work on their third album. And it all started with them coming home.īy the summer of 2019, the Houston group-bassist Laura Lee, 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. It’s a shift that rewards the risk, reorienting Khruangbin’s transportive sound toward a new sense of emotional directness, without losing the spirit of nomadic wandering that’s always defined it. Mordechai features vocals prominently on nearly every song, a first for the mostly instrumental band. But on its third album, it’s finally speaking out loud. Khruangbin has always been multilingual, weaving far-flung musical languages like East Asian surf- rock, Persian funk, and Jamaican dub into mellifluous harmony.
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