Rado’s taste for all things vintage as well as a shared love with Crumb in crafting instrumentally dense, yet sonically-rich arrangements suits the band quite well, with a greater emphasis on atmosphere and studio-as-instrument experimentation at play. Recorded to two-inch tape in Los Angeles by former Foxygen band member-turned producer Jonathan Rado (Father John Misty, Weyes Blood, The Lemon Twigs) and Crumb’s engineer Michael Harris, Ice Melt adds even more depth to the production and sound than their spartan debut Jinx suggested. Listening to it, it’s almost (much like the substance it’s named after) like the songs grow and expand considerably, but over time start to melt and eventually evaporate as you listen.
Ice Melt’s title could not feel more appropriate, it comes at perfect timing. On Crumb’s sophomore album, the aptly-titled Ice Melt, the band finds itself entering the ears of listeners whose relationship with time and how it is spent has been dramatically altered due to the past year. Their first two EPs, Crumb and Locket, along with their debut album Jinx introduced a band that gravitated to fluid grooves, surreal atmospheres, keyboards, lush guitars, alongside Lila Ramani’s dreamy vocals about the feelings and concerns of existential nightmares. However, it’s that musical dexterity on their earliest releases that made it possible for their music to make as much sense alongside their fellow neo-psychedelic contemporaries.
You wouldn’t be wrong as Crumb’s somnambulant fusion of hazy, psychedelic-pop and groove-heavy indie R&B is a slippery description itself, its sound as elusive and as much an exercise in contemporary genre fluidity that you’ll find bands exercising in the streaming age.
Words like “vibey,” “trippy,” “dreamy,” “ethereal,” come to mind. By Zach Noel ( to describe the sound of Brooklyn indie psych-pop band Crumb and you’ll find it’s pretty tough.
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