![]() Crumb are quick to add that though the videos appear incredibly professional, the process behind them is decidedly DIY, with the band often serving as both cast and crew. For 2018’s “Locket,” a 360-degree camera warps the band like a funhouse mirror. In their first video, “ Bones,” Ramani soaked in a tank of feeder fish for hours. Working alongside a Brooklyn-based director who goes by Haoyan of America, their trippy videos translate Crumb’s low-key psychedelia into hallucinogenic odysseys. Forking a pierogi in the restaurant, Ramani attests, “I wouldn’t want to chill to our music.”Ĭrumb’s elaborate visuals have also undoubtedly helped to extend the band’s reach. ![]() “I feel trapped, my mind, the impending doom,” she frets on the group’s debut, self-titled EP from 2016. In a cool murmur, she sings of cracking up or fading away, demons invading her dreams, of dark spirits appearing at shows. Ramani’s opaque lyrics, meanwhile, are more haunting and anxious than calming. “I don’t want to do something that makes you think about a choice we made, but hopefully it made you feel something under the surface.” “A big part is making things shift in ways that are intentional but that you would never think about as a listener,” says keyboardist Brian Aronow. But while Crumb’s work presents a heady front, little about it encourages actual emotional disconnection subtle curls of detail-the distant bleat of a saxophone, a quivering synth note, a bowed guitar warble-emerge and ensnare the ear before fading back into the fray, never distracting from the overall mood. “I try not to look up the numbers because they sometimes freak me out,” singer, guitarist, and lead songwriter Lila Ramani shyly admits.īecause of their streaming success and unobtrusive sound, it could be easy to peg Crumb as just another band churning out “ chill” playlist music that is made to lure listeners into easygoing apathy. Currently, their most popular song boasts 11 million streams on Spotify, an almost unimaginable number for a new independent rock band. Yet without any explicit push-no label, no management, no booking agent-Crumb’s streaming numbers surged with an intensity that countless unsigned bands crave following their 2017 EP, Locket. The quartet’s ambitions for Crumb were always humble, and on the surface, at least, their music is equally subtle-the type of soulful psychedelia that’s ideal for introspection. ![]() As the band peruses the menu, they display a quiet but goofy camaraderie, giggling nervously they haven’t done many interviews. Luckily, the mood today is not so morose. Bassist Jesse Brotter picked the spot-he says that his grandfather once came here and ate a full plate of herring after a funeral. And then there’s Crumb, four twentysomethings who sit inconspicuously in the center of the room. Most of the diners hunching in front of their bowls of beet soup look like they’ve been coming here for at least a half century. There are wood-paneled walls, landscape paintings, hung ornamental dishes. Manhattan’s Ukrainian East Village Restaurant is surreally stuck in time.
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