Last week, Crumb released their stunning third album AMAMA. Follow up to the New York based psych quartet’s 2021 sophomore LP Ice Melt, AMAMA “culls the strange encounters from Crumb’s touring years, tracing the dizzying path of a group that’s been in movement for nearly a decade.” As a result, the album features the band’s “most vulnerable, tender searches for organic connection.” Described as “at the crossroads of psychedelia, pop, jazz, and rock,” Crumb – composed of singer and multi-instrumentalist Lila Ramani, keyboardist and saxophonist Bri Aronow, bassist Jesse Brotter, and drummer Jonathan Gilad – since their standout track “Locket” back in 2017, have succeeded in cultivating a sound all their own, and it has arguably never been as pronounced than in AMAMA. One of our favorite tracks is the gorgeously ebullient “Side By Side,” a track about the double-edged nature of self-sacrifice:
This song isn’t about romantic love, even though on the surface it really seems like it. I wrote it in a particularly low moment – I was reflecting on my relationship to music and the band, frustrated with the emotional and physical toll the lifestyle was taking on me.
Ramani’s vocals are utterly transcendent, caught within both the ultimate beauty of poetry as well as the pain of its process. “I change myself, degrade my health / For you for you,” Ramani laments, “So you can keep on doing well.” Slightly reminiscent of the pasteled, ethereal dirges of Girlpool’s What Chaos is Imaginary, the track moves like a sentient wave of color, sensation, and texture, as if repeatedly catalyzed by the dazzling tremor of its own propulsion. Near the close, there is a subtle, yet substantial doubling back, a peeled-back murkiness hinting at a sudden realization about the holding onto subconscious habits gestured to just moments before: “Building it up/ Just to see it shatter you.”
AMAMA is out now.
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photo by Jordan Coles
kid with a vinyl 