Khruangbin offer a completely new take on their 2015 debut album, The Universe Smiles Upon You, with a re-recorded version out now digitally through Dead Oceans. Work on the project commenced on the actual 10th anniversary of sessions for the original album and was tracked in the same central Texas barn owned by guitarist Mark Speer’s parents.
To commemorate the album’s birthday, the Grammy-nominated trio of Speer, bassist Laura Lee and drummer DJ Johnson initially considered digging through their archives for Universe outtakes or recasting the songs with orchestral arrangements. Instead, they opted to present the songs in different and updated forms while also reconfiguring the track list, which omits opener “Mr. White” and substitutes in the contemporaneous bonus track “Bin Bin” (in turn, “Mr. White” replaces “Bin Bin” on the Japanese edition of The Universe Smiles Upon You ii, titled M. Blanc).
“Getting to the barn is a mission,” Johnson told SPIN of the studio in 2024. “It’s not close. When we’re there, we stay there, which is why it’s good because it puts us away from things. You can really lock into the task at hand. Logistically, it’s harder to do things out there.”
Elsewhere, the shimmering “People Everywhere (Still Alive)” is extended to triple its original running time, while “White Gloves” borrows a newfound disco beat and a seven-minute-plus “Two Fish and an Elephant” coasts on Johnson’s brush-stroked drums and warm atmospherics. The result is both psychedelic and spiritual, and filled with happy accidents such as a meadowlark’s birdsong captured by the microphones during “August Twelve.”
A Khruangbin-produced new video for “White Gloves” is out now. Those desiring The Universe Smiles Upon You ii in physical form, which will be released Dec. 5, can pre-order it by clicking here.
“Mark’s a stickler about, if we did it before, let’s try to do something different,” Johnson told SPIN about Khruangbin’s modus operandi in the studio. “Even in the way I approach something that seems so simple as a drum fill, he’s always listening. He’s always challenging: what can you do differently? How can you go deeper? We realize the more popular this thing gets, it is influential and there may be things that pop up that kind of sound like what we’re doing. It pushes us forward and makes us have to switch it up. You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect it to be fresh, exciting and new. Mark’s really keyed into that. He’s always looking for combinations of things that have never been thought to be put together. That’s what keeps things fresh.”
Khruangbin began a small venue 10th anniversary Universe tour last night (Nov. 5) in Houston, and have dates on tap through Nov. 24-25 in Los Angeles.
Here is the track list for The Universe Smiles Upon You ii:
Little Joe and Mary
Balls and Pins
White Gloves
The Man Who Took My Sunglasses
People Everywhere
Bin Bin
August Twelve
Dern Kala
Two Fish and an Elephant
Zionsville
