100 Greatest Songs of the 20’s So Far #49 Khruangbin & Leon Bridges – Texas Sun

Released: 2020

The mantra in entertainment may be ensure it’s easy to google, but for Khruangbin the rules never seemed to apply. The Scrabble king of a handle is supposedly the Thai word for plane, but defininitive explanations aren’t easy to find.

Indeed, the Texan trio of bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, guitarist Mark Speer and drummer Donald ‘DJ’ Johnson had used ambiguity as a kind of shield, playing live in voluminous headgear and snaking their music though funk, disco and Latin influences on their first two albums The Universe Smiles and 2018’s Con Todo El Mundo.

For that and other reasons success came at their pace, but having toured with Fort Worth based singer Leon Bridges, they then jointly decided to work together on four songs which would become the Texas Sun EP. The title track would change everything; understated, Bridges sounded like he was sitting outside some gas station in the wilderness, whilst the countryfied guitar and wistful slide had tones of longing and regret as the sun fell down on an unreachable horizon. Loveable and searchable – now Khruangbin had it all.