The music of Khruangbin skips and leaps over genres and around styles with an ease that's really astounding. The tunes on the group's newest album, Mordechai, out now via Dead Oceans, are as light as air, and yet utterly unforgettable. The musicians here approach this stuff without a lot of pretension, making this record one that accomplishes so much musically even as it seems wildly accessible throughout.
"Time (You and I)" is all Seventies funk mixed up with Latin touches, while "Pelota" ramps those touches up further, with the guitar-lines here being lightning quick in spots, and altogether infectious. The players -- Laura Lee Ochoa (bass), Mark Speer (guitar), and Donald “DJ” Johnson (drums) -- attack these numbers with a curiosity that makes it sound as if this is the first time these styles may have been mixed together before, never mind that this isn't the first Khruangbin album. Elsewhere, "One to Remember" marries a dub beat to an airy bit of pop, while "So We Won't Forget" is very nearly like The Roches doing some South African pop.
So much of Mordechai gently teases the ear that one can almost overlook how good the hooks are here, how effortlessly the melodies flow like wine. For all the ideas being thrown about, Khruangbin seem to want to charm. Rather than a set of experiments in other styles, the selections on this record are fully-formed indie-pop gems, ornamented with elements of non-Western genres, and flashes of the kind of creative spark that precious few indie-pop acts here have anymore.
Mordechai is out now via Dead Oceans.
More details on Khruangbin via the band's official website, or official Facebook page.
[Photo: Tamsin Isaacs]