Review: What Does Khruangbin Sound Like? This Live Album Helps Clarify The Trio’s Diverse Sound

Khruangbin
Live at Sydney Opera House
(Dead Oceans)
4 1/2 out of 5 stars

Most casual listeners don’t know what this Dallas-based trio’s name means partially because their music is similarly vague, diverse, and difficult to describe. Even when you Google Khruangbin and find its explanation (Thai for “engine fly”), it hardly prepares you for their eclectic style. Even a decade into their career, it’s challenging to pigeonhole their sound, which is likely intentional. You have to hear them.

And doing that live is the closest you’ll come to understanding Khruangbin’s vibe. It’s something they must realize since this is the fifth concert album the band has released in 2023. Previous offerings (streaming and vinyl only, no CD, all with nondescript cover art) were recorded in various locations with similarly wide-ranging guests from UK saxist Nubya Garcia (at New York’s Radio City Music Hall) to soulful singer Toro y Moi (The Fillmore Miami). This final 2023 set finds the triad entrancing a wildly enthusiastic Australian audience for nearly 90 minutes at the titular venue without extra musicians. It concludes an impressive batch of recorded shows that help to define an undefinable groove.

Like the best live performances, Khruangbin rejiggers and often expands older material such as the 2015 “People Everywhere” (stretched from its original 2:49 to over eight minutes) and the languid lope of “A Calf Born in Winter,” one of the outfit’s earliest singles. By the closing “Zionsville” (another choice track from their 2015 debut), they have touched on genres from surf to soul, funk, reggae, world music, disco, psychedelic rock, Spaghetti Western and their peculiar indie take on easy listening. It’s spotlighted by Mark Speers’ mercurial, flowing, often reverbed guitar lines that transform from watery to crisp along with Laura Lee’s rubbery bass and ghostly, often wordless vocals. There’s a delicate, retro ether hanging over the generally atmospheric pieces, enhanced by their largely instrumental slant, making this music best heard in the dark and with lava lamps fired up.

Song titles don’t provide much clarity either; the opening two numbers are titled “The Number 3” and “The Number 4”; others such as “Two Fish and an Elephant” and the thumping, dance-oriented “Evan Finds the Third Room” are just as loopy and enigmatic.

But it’s all part of Khruangbin’s plan to leave writers thumbing through Thesauruses flailing to label what the three piece can be compared to. Perhaps the most agreed-upon narrative is that they don’t resemble any other major act emerging from Houston. Or really anyplace else.

Choose any of the 2023 five live discs to hear just how effectively the threesome translates their often stripped-down, hypnotic ambiance live. But for the best capsule of what Khruangbin is, stick with this wonderful, expertly recorded representation of everything they do.

Whatever it is.