Crumb blends psychedelic rock, jazz, pop, and experimental sounds bringing a whimsical soft sounding approach to rock. The Brooklyn-based four-piece is led by main songwriter Lila Ramani, with Bri Aronow on synths/keyboards, Jesse Brotter on the bass, and Jonathan Gilad on drums. The mellow rock band members met while attending Tufts University in Boston.
I was gifted tickets by a friend who had a friend back out last minute. I had listened to the band a few times, but I’d never done a deep dive of their work. Sometimes this makes the best concert experience…
AMAMA
They played mostly from their new album AMAMA which came out May 17th of this year.
AMAMA cements Crumb as a band uniquely their own. The title comes from the word grandmother in Malayalam, a language entwined with lead singer Lila Ramani’s heritage. According to Bandcamp, it’s a soundscape full of playful and patchwork experimentation — glitchy pitch-shifted vocals, cell phone recordings, nautical blips, sax mouthpiece solos, blasted drum samples, and piano strings dampened with Silly Putty — AMAMA deepens the band’s hypnotic sound.
This album, according to the band, gives them a warm feeling inspired by the outdoors. Green and vibrant as opposed to Ice Melt, which is their sophomore pandemic album and much more closed off in a dark room vibes. Below I compiled a series of photos I took in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, and the island of Ometepe which are the places with the greenest most lush natural beauty I’ve ever seen. This is where I want to be listening to AMAMA.
Instead of a lyrical deep dive, the band’s songs are best analyzed through letting the curated mood of each track wash over you. On AMAMA, these atmospheres are created through intense repetition, where certain words and phrases are echoed again and again throughout a song.
Crumb delivers a deeply personal and sonically rich psych-pop experience. Lyrics reflect the feeling of wanting home or to plant your feet down somewhere. Searching for stability, connection, and understanding amid life’s unpredictability of being on tour are more themes for AMAMA.
Behind the Title Track
The title track AMAMA serves as a vibrant homage to Ramani’s grandmother, blending her Malaysian-Indian heritage with Crumb’s signature blend of psychedelia, pop, jazz, and rock.
Ramani and her grandmother Léela don’t speak the same language and are separated by thousands of miles. Combining her voice and her grandmothers chopped up was a special thing and made her feel like they were singing together from disparate places. The song tells a story of romantic love between Ramani and her partner growing up in parallel a mile from each other, and is threaded together by a sample of my grandmother singing.
Album art
According to an interview with Crumb and Office Magazine, the album art is loosely inspired by Afghan handmade rugs that Abe, their creative director, and Ramani have always been fans of. They tell stories and folklore, and the band presumes the album is a version of that.
Discovery Zone Live
Discovery Zone opened and blessed the crowd with mesmerizing hyperpop beats, lo-fi vocals and synths. She used a special clear projector screen where enticing 3D visuals were projected on the screen allowing her to be visible behind it. She even played the theremin, which I had never seen played before.
New York/Berlin based musician and multimedia artist JJ Weihl makes music under the moniker Discovery Zone. A dual citizen in the US and Germany, JJ moved to Berlin after college in part to bridge a generational gap between herself and her grandparents who moved to the United States after World War II. After teaching herself digital production, JJ started Discovery Zone in 2018. It began as a personal experiment in sound and video production. JJ’s first project Remote Control in 2020 pursued a combinatory strain of experimental pop that found room for gorgeous pop vocal arrangements, hi-def electro beats, and textural ambient synthesis. Discovery Zone caught wider attention on tours in 2021 and 2022 with acts including Parcels, Black Marble, and Jenny Hval.
JJ commissioned a work called Cybernetica, commissioned for the Pop-Kultur festival in Berlin in 2021. In the process of making the piece, JJ hired a private investigator to extensively document her daily life into quantifiable data points and presenting her “results” in an intimate, mind-bending live performance — parts PowerPoint presentation, concert, personal diary, and sci-fi theater play. Four of the songs written for the show ended up being the foundation of her newest record, Quantum Web.
In a conversation in June with Noise Narrative about Discovery Zone’s mind behind Quantum Web, JJ said “The ‘Quantum Web’ is a framework for understanding underlying networks of interconnection. I think we are entangled in the Quantum Web as much as we are creating it.”
Crumb Live
AMAMA has been on an infinite loop in my head ever since I saw the show. The band’s special jive was magical and it was beautiful to watch them bring their new album to life on stage. Ramani’s dreamy indie voice sounded like a echoing spirit. They were clearly having so much fun, and made the Brooklyn Bowl feel warm, cozy, and intimate.
The stage was adorned with four giant Jacobs Ladder contraptions with iridescent tiles rotating with light projecting through the tiles. They had colorful artwork on the other sides of the tiles. I had never seen anything like this before, so describing it is a challenge!
AMAMA is a beautiful example of how music is the universal language that can bring people together in a miraculous way. The story behind the title track is told from a unique perspective, and the connection Ramani finds in culture brings me joy. It’s intricately layered feel good music. I said yes to going to this show on a whim and ended up finding my new favorite albums and artists to listen to.
Click here to listen to AMAMA!
BOOGIE WITH EMMA 