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Crumb is the psych indie-pop quartet (Lila Ramani, Jesse Brotter, Bri Aronow and Jonathan Gilad) who came up in Boston in 2016 and decamped to Brooklyn, and their sound is a hazy, off-kilter blend of 60s psych, dream pop, loose jazz and a little trip-hop. Across Jinx, Ice Melt and AMAMA they have built a catalog that drifts and lurches in all the right places, and Live! is the proof: 14 tracks pulled from three Southern California nights, the studio versions reshaped on the spot.
We go back a ways with this band. Crumb played Levitation in 2021 and Austin Psych Fest in 2023, so getting to press Live! as a Levitation Edition feels less like a pickup and more like keeping a conversation going.
What hits us first about Live! is how loose the band lets itself get. These are not the studio takes with crowd noise bolted on. Ramani stretches phrasing, the rhythm section leans into pockets that the records only hinted at, and Aronow's keys and sax smear the edges until familiar songs go a little strange in the best way. Pulling 14 tracks from three Southern California nights gives it real range, and the sequencing moves between the dreamy and the propulsive without ever sounding like a greatest-hits lap.
One honest note: a couple of the longer passages drift far enough out that casual listeners may want the tighter studio cuts as a map first. That is also exactly why it works on wax. This is a band caught in the act of rearranging itself, and that is the kind of record that rewards a full side and a real listen.
So we put it on a Ghostride Swirl 2xLP, limited to 300. A live document this alive deserves a pressing you actually want to sit with.
Recommended if you like: La Luz, Elephant Stone, MIEN.
