AMAMA by Crumb

Review written by crimsonhawk666

Crumb’s latest album AMAMA feels like you are staring out a window at the lush forest around you. Lila Ramani’s dreamy, almost incoherent voice dominates the whole record, with beautiful backing instrumentals and fragmented synths by Bri Aronow, Jonathan Gilad, and Jesse Brotter. The whole thing feels very nostalgic, like there is a memory trying to be recalled but it is cut up into bits and pieces. It is fluid and experimental, with sections of unexpected upbeat pop elements peeking through the haze of shoegaze-esque vocals and long stretches of calm. It is unlike anything I, personally, have ever heard before.

This album dabbles in the familiar and the unfamiliar. The familiarity of the basic percussion beats mixed with strange sounding synths and at times distant-sounding vocals hone the feel of this dreamscape Crumb has put together. The first track, “From Outside A Window Sill”, exemplifies this perfectly. It comes in right away with a familiar-sounding drum and guitar beat, but as the synths in the background come in, along with Ramani’s hazy vocals, listeners are transported to another world. Focusing on the vocals in particular, it reminds me of watching the show Twin Peaks as a teenager and hearing Julee Cruise’s lofty voice, similar to other female singers in the 80’s and 90’s. This also contributes to the nostalgic quality of the album, even if you have never heard anything like it before.

Looking at the lyrics of the songs off this album, a lot of them feel stripped back to the basic essence of what Crumb wants to convey. For example, in “Crushxd”, they tell the tale of their tour van accidentally running over a turtle in the road. While not explicitly stated in the song, you really get the feel of grief in the lyrics anyways. At the end there is a repetition of “I’ll never see you here again,” which is just as beautiful as it is haunting. The theme of repetition in the lyrics flows throughout many of the songs on this record, making you focus on the phrases that are being repeated. “The Bug”, my particular favorite off of this record, has a similar kind of repetition on it. While it varies a little, the phrase “It’s just always on my mind” is repeated throughout this song. I think that this track can feel very relatable to people, we all have things that we just can’t stop thinking about sometimes. And of course, yes, repetition is common in most music, but with how few lyrics there are in the songs on AMAMA, it feels intentional.

As a whole, this incredible album from Crumb makes me wonder what the band is going to do next. Compared to their previous two albums, this one feels like Crumb has truly found their sound. Ramani has perfected the tranquil quality of her voice since their first album came out back in 2019, and AMAMA feels like such a natural progression from their second album, Ice Melt, which came out in 2021. Crumb just keeps on getting better and better, and they are really here to prove that.