Khruangbin's 'Christmas Time Is Here'

Khruangbin: Christmas Time Is Here
(Night Time Stories / LateNightTales / Dead Oceans, ALN75001 / DOC184, USA/UK, 2018, 45 RPM, large hole, translucent green vinyl)

One of the rising stars of 2018, Texan trio Khruangbin is touring all over the world at the moment, playing in mainly sold out venues. Quite an accomplishment for a mostly instrumental band with a Thai name, that finds its musical influences all over the world. Was their 2015 debut mainly influenced by Thai funk, their breakthrough album, 2018’s ‘Con Todo El Mundo’, has a much wider array of influences – as the title of the record already implies, from all over the world. The influences Khruangbin uses are so wide that it is almost impossible to classify their music. As for their name, khruangbin means aeroplane in Thai and was chosen as the bandname because it was the favorite Thai word of bass player Laura Lee, who was just trying to learn Thai when the band had to decide on a name.

The foundation for the band was already laid more than ten years ago, when guitarist Mark Speer and drummer/keyboardplayer Donald “DJ” Johnson (drums, keys) met, when Speer was the guitarist and Johnson the organist of Rudy Rasmus’s St. John’s Methodist Church gospel band in Houston, Texas. A few years later, Speer met Lee, and the two found out they both loved Afghan music and Middle Eastern architecture. Speer teached Lee how to play bass and in 2010, the two joined Yppah and Bonobo on tour. After the tour, Speer and Lee continued to make music together, using a barn as their practice place. They asked Johnson to complete the line-up as drummer. When their track ‘Calf Born In Winter’ was included on Bonobo’s ‘Late Night Tales’-compilation, it brought Khruangbin into the limelight, and helped to raise interest for their debut album ‘The Universe Smiles Upon You’. The next few years, the band toured a lot and further broadened their sound. All the touring and the positive press helped to make ‘Con Todo El Mundo’ their breakthrough album.

And now there is a Christmas single. ‘Christmas Time Is Here’, a cover of the famous song of the Vince Guaraldi ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ soundtrack, the only song from the soundtrack to featured vocals. ‘Christmas Time Is Here’ turned out to be the favorite Christmas song of all three band members, so the band decided to record it. That took them only fifteen minutes – but I am pretty sure than mixing the song took much longer.
The single features two versions of the song. The A-side has the original version the band recorded and is described by the label (or better: labels, as the single is released on three different labels) as ‘ambling sweetness and a beat-driven groove’. The B-side has the socalled ‘Version Mary’ and is remixed by Vuelo, who also did a dub version of the band’s 2016 single People Everywhere (Still Alive). Vuelo gave the song a more spaced out, psychedelic sound. It sounds like a dub version of the A-side, with even more echo used and drums that are more upfront than in the original version. In both versions, the vocals are more an extra instrument than that they stand out from the music – in line with how Guaraldi’s original version used vocals in the song. The trio make the song their own, but at the same time, stay true to the original.

The single is pressed on translucent green vinyl, comes packed in a festive looking sleeve, with a cartoon of the three members playing in a snowy landscape. There are two different versions of the single – one for the US market and one for the European market. That’s cool, as that saves postage. The only difference between both editions is a different barcode on the back of the sleeve, while the European version has a slightly smaller (but it is barely noticable) sleeve.

As far as I know, this is only the third time the song ‘Christmas Time Is Here’ was released on a 7”. The first time was when the original was released on a promotional single in 1965. The second time was when the song was recorded by R.E.M. for the 1993 edition of the band’s yearly fanclub Christmas single. This Khruangbin single is much cheaper than those two singles. A copy of the 1965 original was sold recently on Ebay for almost 130 US dollars, while copies of R.E.M.’s 1993 holiday single start at USD 35 on Discogs. And, very coindicental, there is another band covering ‘Christmas Time Is Here’ this year, and they are also releasing the song on a 7” – Lucius. That 7” will be released a few weeks later than Khruangbin’s version, on December 7. More about that single later.

Khruangbin’s single can be found in all the cool indie record shops in the US, the UK and the European mainland – I saw plenty of copies in the two Amsterdam records shops I visted on RSD Black Friday, so despite the fact that the US version is sold out at the Bandcamp site of the band, I think it won’t be difficult to track down a copy. And it’s worth it – despite the fact that the 7” is rather pricey.

You can listen to the A-side of the single on Youtube: