I love that Khruangbin is absolutely devoted to its aesthetic (both visually and sonically).
Their stage show is an almost theatrical performance. It’s like watching a long-form perfume commercial. Mark and Laura are committed to the wigs and a vaguely European chic style. Their choreography is slow and deliberate. The band even exits the stage together, in a tidy single file line. There was no rock talk, no looseness, no fucking around. Those dudes took the stage and put on a two hour performance, never breaking character until the final send off after the encore.
That commitment tracks in their discography, too. They manage to evolve without losing their trademark sound. (My wife put it succinctly: “Khruangbin will never have an ‘Eras’ tour.”) When you play a Khruangbin album, you know what you’re getting: the bastard child of surf guitar and Ravi Shankar over a funky baseline and metronomic drums, maybe with a dash of repetitive, sultry vocals. It might be a little funky, or vaguely Latin, or Eastern influenced; but it’s always distinctly Khruangbin. It was 45 minutes into the show last night before they played a song I recognized. But at the same time, I felt like I had heard them all before.