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Crumb are one of those bands that felt beamed in from somewhere just slightly off our plane. The Brooklyn quartet formed at Tufts back around 2016, with Lila Ramani on guitar and vocals, Jesse Brotter on bass, Bri Aronow weaving synths, keys and saxophone, and Jonathan Gilad on drums. Their sound is a languid, eerie fold of dream pop, neo-psych, hazy jazz and trip-hop, and it made them one of the most distinctive acts to surface in the late 2010s. The run from the early Crumb and Locket EPs into their debut LP Jinx set them up, and Ice Melt in 2021 pushed them somewhere moodier and more electronic.
We go back with these four. Crumb played Levitation 2021 in Austin that October, then returned for Austin Psych Fest 2023, taking the Day One Friday slot at the Far Out Lounge for our 15th anniversary. So when we say we are pressing their catalog as Levitation Editions, including the Live! 2xLP cut over three nights in Southern California in 2024, it comes from real history on real stages. No festival-capture mythmaking here, just a band we have shared a field with twice and a few sleeves we are proud to put on wax.
Ice Melt is the record where Crumb's haze found its architecture. The psych-jazz-dream-pop swirl that ran loose on Jinx gets pulled into focus here, submerged and lit from below, every synth and vocal sounding like it was tracked a few feet underwater (in part, it literally was). Co-producer Jonathan Rado of Foxygen helped them build that depth, and Lila Ramani's interior-monologue lyrics drift right on the surface of it. Up & Down opens on a thick, low bass pulse that snaps the whole woozy mood into a groove.
The press caught the leap too. Pitchfork gave it a 7.5, Rolling Stone ran a feature, and the read was the one we share: Crumb getting more lucid and more reachable without sanding off what made them strange. We will be straight about the trade, though. The same haze that makes Ice Melt so immersive can blur the edges, and a couple of cuts drift more than they land. We hear that as the cost of the atmosphere, not a flaw to engineer out.
Either way, it is built for a needle and a quiet room over a phone speaker. The depth in these mixes opens up on wax, which is why we were glad to press this edition. Drop it on the platter and let it pull you under.
Recommended if you like: Melody's Echo Chamber, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Altin Gün.
