Khruangbin & Leon Bridges - Texas Sun EP

 

Khruangbin & Leon Bridges present Texas Sun, their collaborative EP coming out in February 2020 on the Dead Oceans label, in partnership with Columbia Records and Night Time Stories Ltd. The title track rests on a slowly rolling backbeat and strums of flamenco-style guitar, as Bridges sings of the pull the unique Texan landscape can have on you, even from miles away. It's a stunner of an opener, kicking off the EP's own journey through homesick reminiscences, backseat romances, and late-night contemplations.

Texas Sun is the kind of record made for listening with the windows down and the road humming softly beneath you. Their first time writing with a vocalist, Texas Sun finds Khruangbin — formed of Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar, and Donald "DJ" Johnson on drums — tailoring their exotic funk to Bridges' soulful melodies. On the EP, these Texas natives meet up somewhere in the mythical nexus of the state's past, present, and future — a dreamy badlands where genres blur as seamlessly as the terrain. The state's music is as varied and wild as its geography, producing Southern rap pioneers Geto Boys and UGK, lysergic trailblazers The 13th Floor Elevators, and genres-unto-themselves like St. Vincent, Gary Clark Jr., and Beyoncé.

Texas Sun lives here too, a record that calls equally to the chopped-and-screwed hip-hop fans rattling slabs on the southside of Houston, to those who grew up on listening to both mariachi and post-hardcore out on the Mexican borders of El Paso, to the Austin acid-dropping art school kids. All of these things overlap on Texas Sun in a multicolored melange, purple hues as vivid and unpredictable as one of the state's rightfully celebrated sunsets.

1. Texas Sun

2. Midnight

3. C-Side

4. Conversion

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