Texan three-piece Khruangbin’s star is most certainly in the ascendant. Their 2020 album, Mordechai, saw bassist Laura Lee, guitarist Mark Speer and drummer DJ Johnson reach a whole new audience, their combination of jazz rhythms and eastern melodies striking a chord that resonated across the globe.

This fourth album, their first without any external contributors, sees the Houston trio revelling in laidback rhythms, the pace rarely raised above a sashay. It's a jazz-inflected collection that, for the most part, finds that rarest of middle grounds by being sweet and mellow, without dissolving totally into the realm of background music, with only ‘Farolim De Delgueiras’ too tremulous for its own good.

Opener ‘Fifteen Fifty-Three’ is so laidback it’s practically horizontal, a combination of jazz rhythm, slowly plodding bass and easy guitar solo. Current single ‘Pon Pón’ is more uptempo and immediate, while ‘Caja De La Sala’ is short and very beautiful, with mostly quiet guitar that trembles off into the ether. Then there’s the swoonsome sway of ‘Three From Two’ and the quietly insistent ‘A Love International’.

Most of these dozen tracks are instrumental, carried by echoey guitar on tracks like the yearning ‘Ada Jean’ and ‘Juegos Y Nubes’, with the occasional, almost whispered vocal on the likes of ‘May Ninth’ and ‘Todavía Viva’. Overall, A La Sala proves quietly beautiful and wonderfully engaging.

8/10