To Laugh All Night

Khruangbin “Ada Jean”

Khruangbin is a trio with no weak link, but I find that I mainly connect to their music through Marko Speer’s guitar. He typically plays with a plaintive, understated tone and lets his melodies flow very casually, like an impressionistic story gradually unfolding through his notes. There’s a tendency for a lot of listeners, particularly writers, to think of lyrics as the meat of a song, but music like this is basically telling you words are inadequate, that you have to play a guitar to express certain things. In other words, there’s an elegance and eloquence to Speer’s playing that I think is beyond a lot of the most thoughtful and clever lyricists’ capacity.

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Brittany Howard “I Don’t”

I had to look up and verify that Brittany Howard is indeed the sole author of this song because the atmosphere and the pitch of the vocal hook suggested that it was built around the kind of vintage R&B sample that you’d expect to be the center of a Ghostface Killah song. The whole song is in 60s soul mode but I love how the more traditional aspects of the arrangement mesh with the “chipmunk soul” aesthetic, like she’s collapsing down the eras and pushing the sound out of either nostalgia or DJ quotation. The timeline collapse also suits the lyrical conceit – she’s singing about being too overworked and exhausted to have fun, and that’s as evergreen a sentiment as you’re going to get.

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