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RM chats with psych-rock band Crumb ahead of Hopscotch.
Laid-back but never mundane, dreamy but more than just a backdrop—Brooklyn-based band Crumb’s music is everything all at once: nonchalant, unnerving and transient.
“Everything is an influence—probably subconsciously, definitely not consciously,” maintains lead vocalist Lila Ramani. To boot, a little bit of everything is sprinkled throughout their discography—from jazz to psych to shoegaze.
Crumb is set to bring their sparkly dreamscape to Raleigh as a headliner at Hopscotch, closing out the DTR fest on Saturday at Moore Square—one of their only two shows scheduled for the remainder of the year. “We’re focusing more on writing this fall, so no big-time touring,” says Ramani, also noting this will be the first time the band has played in Raleigh in years. Many of the group’s past local gigs were before they got their bearings in the industry—think house shows and smaller venues like Local 506.
Now, Crumb stands on various singles, one EP, three albums and millions of listeners. And their many fans aren’t ones to get a full eight hours of shut-eye: A common time to revel in the quiet, waterlogged melodies is in the dark, when the rest of the world is quiet too.
“I feel like it can be any time of day, but I definitely think a solitary kind of listening makes sense, or a laid-back environment,” emphasizes Ramani. There’s a time and a place for their haze—and “it’s definitely not for the club,” she notes.
But, when performing live, the band translates their hypnotic ballads to be more energetic and upbeat than the recordings. “Our live shows are different, or that’s at least what people have told us—that it’s much more.” Ramani told RM. More upbeat songs—like Balloon, which has a more disco-y feel—usually make the setlist.
Many of the band’s songs from early EPs and albums also make the cut, though Ramani notes the performance behind them feels different than the rendering of a more recent track. “People love them so much, and that’s amazing, but it feels the most removed from where we are now,” she says. “It’s been almost ten years.”
The four-piece’s groggy, gaze-y sound has stood its ground from album to album, and on their most recent record, Amama, Crumb appeared to lean even more into their surreal, blissed-out noise with even less vocals than previous albums. “It’s hard to tell from the outside, but I don’t think we had that in mind going into it,” Ramani muses. “Vocals are just another instrument.”
And while that instrument leans more muted on certain tracks, it’s hard to generalize the whole album, she adds. “The lyrics pop a lot more,” and certain songs still spotlight their underwater-sounding winding scripts. Despite both Crumb’s reach and palette expanding in Amama, their songwriting process has remained more or less the same. “In general, it’s been mostly the same thing, and looking forward, we might try to change it up a little more since it’s been so long,” says the vocalist.
In short, Moore Square is set to sparkle with dreamy jazz-psych paired with transient thoughts, making reveling in Crumb’s sound a no-brainer. crumbtheband.com; hopscotchmusicfest.com
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