Midway through Crumb's new album, there's a 49-second ephemera called 'Nightly News'. It sounds blurry, a blur of cable news sampler and this-only-in is it swollen? you feel like you just woke up on the couch and the TV is taunting you with what happened this time. Were millions of cockroaches accidentally released from nearby research facilities? Serial slasher last seen buying chips at the local mini-mart? Nothing, it turns out: The song ends before revealing what the news actually is. It feels especially fitting for the New York band, who have spent the last nearly decade crafting hypnotic epics with a sinister edge. In 2019, frontwoman Lila Ramani told Pitchfork that she would not be “relaxing” her group's output. As dreamy as it is, their music is a wake-up call.
Crumbs are not the kind of thing to get eight hours of sleep. Their first two albums, of 2019 Jinx and of 2021 Ice melting, seemed to revel in the space between 2 a.m. and daylight—not only because of their shared sound, a slightly unsettling take on psychedelia, but also the ideas that informed that sound, the kind of things you have to dream about. If you asked them about Ice meltingHis underwater vocal mixes wouldn't tell you about Ableton effects or post-session knob adjustments. they would tell you how they put condoms on microphones and dunk them in buckets of water. Ramani sang of fleeting thoughts, fleeting curiosities about strawberry seeds (“BNR”) or rendezvous with dark spirits (“Jinx”). AMAMA, the band's third album, becomes more playful and honest than ever, without sacrificing their signature red-eye experimentation. It's a sleeker, riskier and more satisfying iteration of Crumb's approach: proof that as their footprint has expanded, so has their palette.
Crumb takes a microscope to hazy memories, gathering the ephemera of years spent peering through windows. They have roots in the New York scene—Ramani is an alum of the Brooklyn ensemble Standing on the Corner. Bassist Jesse Brotter features on MIKE's early tracks – but their inventive jazz-psych calls upon a wider set of collaborators, including Toronto's BADBADNOTGOOD and Melbourne's Hiatus Kaiyote. In “The Bug,” a hypnotic paean that catches flies and feels, Ramani's poetry is surrounded by a comprehensive rhythm section that crawls like an insect. “Side by Side,” like Crumb's best songs, combines romance with vague mourning. when Ramani sings “trying to run away” and the descending chord progression gives way to a feverish instrumental break, you feel like you're running away too, but to something—a seismic, supernatural encounter. Crumb's music provides a cinematic score for Ramani's strange scenarios, slow-burn psychological thrillers that make you look over your shoulder and then at the world around you.
