Crumb: Crumb/Locket [CRUMB]

Why you'll love it

This double EP gathers the Brooklyn band's first two self-issued records onto one 12-inch, put out on the band's own Crumb label. It's where Lila Ramani's hazy psych pop first found its audience, a couple of years before the debut album Jinx.

This edition

• Crumb (2016) and Locket (2017) EPs on one 12"

About the album

Plenty of bands start with songs written in a bedroom; Crumb started with songs Lila Ramani wrote in high school and college. In 2016 she brought them to Brian Aronow, Jesse Brotter and Jonathan Gilad, and the four, who had met at college, recorded them as a pair of short EPs that slowly found a following online and at shows, enough to turn a side project into a full-time touring band.

Crumb is the woozier of the two: "Bones" drifts in on a lazy, jazzy groove, "Vinta" and "So Tired" curl around Aronow's keys and saxophone, and "Plants" closes it out in a warm haze. Locket tightens things up, with "Recently Played" and "Thirty-Nine" sliding along on Brotter's bass and Gilad's crisp drums, while the title track floats Ramani's cool, half-whispered vocal over a lo-fi psych shimmer.

Together they make a seven-song introduction to the sound the band later stretched out on Jinx and Ice Melt, all funded and issued by the band themselves. Not bad for songs first written in high school; most of what we wrote in high school is best left in a drawer.

Also at Kops: more Crumb on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Crumb (cat# CR-001), a reissue of the 2019 EP.