Vibes were high at Jacobs Pavilion on Wednesday night, when Khruangbin soared through a set of groovy, summery songs fitting for the outdoor venue.
The Texas-based musical trio — Laura Lee Ochoa on bass and vocals, Mark Speer on the guitar and vocals and Donald “DJ” Johnson on the drums — brings an electrifying psychedelic rock sound to the forefront of their music, with hints of inspiration from various genres such as rock, soul and funk.
From the moment it played its first song from its latest album, “Fifteen Fifty-Three,” the band electrified the crowd with a crisp sound that felt personal and intimate. The intimacy of the first song set the tone for the night and highlighted the album’s themes of nostalgia, familiarity and home.
“It’s like a spiritual feeling that I get when I listen to them,” says one concertgoer, who drove from Columbus to see the band. “[Their music] just uplifts me and [has] nice energy. A lot of their songs just mean a lot to me.”
Although Ochoa and Speer are well-known and don’t seem shy of the spotlight, there’s a mysteriousness that follows them as they perform. Wearing long, black wigs created an air of anonymity and a tension that felt almost otherworldly — yet the chemistry between all the band members remained intact.
The stage and lights imitated the album’s cover, featuring a house window, through which scenes of the weather changed — going from sunrise, to sunset, to night stars, to a thunderstorm.
The band overwhelmed the crowd with their airy synths and vocals as they transitioned into “May Ninth,” with Ochoa’s deep and rich bass warming the venue. Seamless transitions kept two sets of songs moving into the night.
Despite technical difficulties halfway through the band’s fifth song “Pon Pón,” where Mark’s pedalboard malfunctioned and caused the band to leave the stage for 20 minutes, the group was able to come back and win the crowd back over.
A La Sala, meaning “to the living room” in Spanish, marks the band’s first album in four years, following 2020’s Mordechai, which was released during the beginning stages of the COVID pandemic. Back then, it was a time when hope was faint, and fate was questionable. Mordechai felt like an album to distract the world from its grievances and get it to feel, while A La Sala feels like a 12-tracked layered, bittersweet love letter to fans and to the band’s home state of Texas.
“’A la Sala:’ I used to scream it around my house when I was a little girl, to get everybody in the living room; to get my family together. That’s kind of what recording the new album felt like,” Ochoa said at the show. “Emotionally, there was a desire to get back to square one between the three of us, to where we come from in sonics and in feeling. Let’s get back there.”
Khruangbin Setlist: May 29, 2024, Jacobs Pavilion:
1. “Fifteen Fifty‐Three”
2. “May Ninth”
3. “Ada Jean”
4. “Farolim de Felgueiras”
5. “Pon Pón”
6. “Todavía Viva”
7. “Juegos y Nubes”
8. “Hold Me Up (Thank You)”
9. “Caja de la Sala”
10. “Three From Two”
11. “A Love International”
Set 2:
12. “August Twelve”
13. “Dern Kala”
14. “The Number 3”
15. “The Recital That Never Happened”
16. “Shida”
17. “So We Won’t Forget”
18. “The Infamous Bill”
19. “Pelota”
20. “María También”
21. “Time (You and I)”
Encore:
22. “Evan Finds the Third Room”
23. “People Everywhere (Still Alive)”
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