Khruangbin are celebrating a decade since their debut album — by doing it all over again. The band just surprise-released The Universe Smiles Upon You ii, an album of re-recorded, reimagined songs from their debut. It’s out today, 10 years to the day since the original.
The band was initially unsure of how they wanted to mark the occasion, or what a re-recorded version of their debut would even sound like. “The thought was like, ‘We’ll just do it all over again. And it will be us 10 years later with the same instruments in the same location, and it’ll be different because we’re different,’” Laura Lee Ochoa, the band’s bassist, says in an interview over Zoom. “But as the date neared, it was sort of, ‘Actually, the kids 10 years later would think about the songs as they are today, and not just play them as they were. That’s not who we are.’”
The Houston trio, which comprises Ochoa, guitarist Mark Speer, and drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson, have released four studio albums, a collaborative album with Vieux Farka Touré, two EPs with fellow Texan Leon Bridges, and several live EPs since first appearing on the scene in the mid-2010s. Khruangbin’s signature sound of mostly-instrumental psychedelic rock, which pulls from global influences from Thai rock to Southern soul, has made them a staple of the festival circuit and a much-imitated act.
Speer says it was important to get the sound right as they revisited their debut. “I wanted to get really textural with it,” he says. “I wanted to come in almost from an ASMR standpoint. I was going to play acoustic guitar on some stuff. I was going to put contact mics and everything, so all the squeaks and the noises and the air in the room has this dusty sound.” Influenced by their work with Arooj Aftab, they also added drum loops to several tracks.
Fans will notice that the track listing has been rearranged. “Bin Bin,” a hidden track from the original’s vinyl, replaces “Mr. White,” and Ochoa, who typically sequences the band’s albums, reordered the rest of the songs around it. “The sequencing didn’t make sense in the original order,” said Ochoa. “I usually have to find the first song. What is the central thesis statement of the record? And it was definitely not the first song from the last record.” Here, Speer comes to the original album’s defense: “It didn’t make sense this time. The sequencing in 2015 was perfect.”
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While they made some changes, Khruangbin still wanted to approach the reworked album the same way they recorded The Universe Smiles Upon You. That included returning to where they recorded the debut, a bare-bones barn on a property owned by Speer’s family. “It’s just corrugated tin walls. There’s no insulation. It’s dirt floors,” he says. “So when it got cold, it got really cold. We started stuffing the cracks in the doors with blankets just to keep the wind from blowing through.”
The band was drawn to the barn in part because of how Texas it felt, an identity the trio has always worn on their sleeves. “Houston specifically is woven into the fabric of who we are,” DJ says. “Secret’s out now because everyone’s moving here, but Houston has its own unique blend of cultural flavors that meld here.”
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That appeal of seemingly disparate cultures coming together is reflected in the band’s music, but their Texan roots are something they often return to. It’s what drew them to work with Leon Bridges on their two collaborative EPs, 2020’s Texas Sun and 2022’s Texas Moon. “When Texans hang out with Texans, we kind of have this unique understanding of each other,” DJ says. They add that they intended to make a full album together with the singer, but say that Bridges’ label wasn’t sold on the idea. “It wasn’t something that they felt confident about,” Ochoa says. “And I sent a Hail Mary email to everyone I could, saying that I thought this music deserved to be heard.”
Khruangbin are heading on the road for a short run of intimate shows to celebrate The Universe Smiles Upon You ii, with tickets available to members of the band’s Khru Club. “We’ve purposely decided to play smaller venues and smaller rooms. And I think that in itself is really exciting,” DJ says. The trio’s DIY ethos has kept them close-knit, and carried them through the highs and lows of being in a band, he adds: ”We have a saying, ‘Always bet on Khruangbin.’ We’ve learned to just lean into ourselves and be who we are unapologetically.”