Skip to main content

Crumb - Jinx

Jinx is the first, and only, full length album by the band Crumb. It caught my eye, or rather ear, late last year while I was searching for music on YouTube. What makes this album appeal to me so much is its unique blend of trip-hop and neo-psychedelia. Trip-hop is a genre of music, popularized by the band Portishead, that is the gloomy goth child of hip-hop and electronica. It is basically what you get when you take a hip-hop beat, add spooky singing, and add filters and sound effects to make it sound uncanny and retro. Neo-psychedalia, as the name suggests, is a modernized version of psychedelic rock. Electronic and dance elements are often added added, along with falsetto vocals and a more dreamy sound. Some examples of neo-psychedellic bands are The Flaming Lips, MGMT, and Tame Impala. The result of combining these two genres is this laid back, spooky, spiritual sound. It's like you just died and are a ghost in a graveyard, but you are kinda okay with it, and are just chilling out. That's the vibe I get from this album.

The singing on this album, provided by singer/guitarist Lila Ramani, is very unique. Her vocals sound very laid back, uninterested, and effortless, yet at the same time, silky and extremely beautiful. She also frequently reads out lyrics in a non-stop list format, giving very few moments for pauses in between lines, as seen on songs like "Cracking" and "Ghostride". I think this singing style works really well with the music, and contributes to the dream-like atmosphere the band creates. 

This album also has some decent drumming. The infectious beats on songs such as "Fall Down" and "Part III" combined with the band's dreamy melodies, result in songs that are very fun to listen to.

I didn't talk about individual songs on this album too much because, much like the piece of amber featured on the cover, this album is pretty consistent the whole way through with some interesting bits trapped inside. Whenever I listen to it, the whole thing just starts blurring together after the first few songs. For a lot of bands, this would be a big problem, but for Crumb, it works out, and I appreciate an album that flows really well together. Their goal was obviously to make a really chill, relaxing album, and they achieved just that. Of course, the downside of this consistency is that it gets a little boring at parts, especially towards the second half of the album.

Overall, I think this is a good album, and it's worth giving a few listens.

Rating: 6.5/10

10/6/23 Re-Review Score: 8/10 - I believe I was overly harsh in my original review

Favorite Tracks: "Cracking", "Ghostride", "Fall Down", "Part III", "And It Never Ends", "Jinx"

Listen to Crumb - Jinx on Bandcamp!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular

Молчат Дома - Этажи

You may be wondering, 'Is the band Молчат Дома, who created the album, Этажи, a foreign band?' and 'Are they going to be singing some non-english language, perhaps Russian?' The answer to both of these questions is yes. I can't remember how I found this album originally, but one day it came up in my YouTube recommended, I instantly recognized the cover, and decided to give it a listen. It was really good. It reminded of me listening to Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures for the first time. Note: In this review, I italicize Russian words written in the Roman alphabet, put "quotation marks" around English translations, and do nothing to Russian words written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Молчат Дома or Molchat Doma (roughly translates to "The Houses are Silent") is a 'cold wave' band. This is a genre of music that I don't know too much about, but from what I understand the genre is close to goth, except more detached and minimalistic. Si...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

Have you ever listened to psychedelic rock an thought "man, this isn't trippy enough, I wish there was some kind of super psychedelic genre"? Well now you have it with the shoegaze album Loveless by My Bloody Valentine! Shoegaze (also called shoegazing) sounds like psychedelic, stoned and on acid. The genre features loud distorted guitars with a blurry dreamlike sound and softer, muffled vocals in the background. The hazy wall of sound created by shoegaze is purposely there to try to overwhelm the listener. Whenever I listen to shoegaze I feel like I am floating through space in a dream, which is a result of the calming effects of the music. Shoegaze is called as such because of British newspapers who criticized the new genre by saying all the musicians did was gaze at their shoes during live performances. These same newspapers also coined the term "shoegazing," which eventually stuck. The reason why they always looked at their feet, is shoegaze bands heavily u...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Jesus Lizard - Goat

        Since I just reviewed Big Black (see my review of Big Black - Atomizer here ), I thought it would be appropriate to review another highly influential noise rock band, The Jesus Lizard. The Jesus Lizard is strongly influenced by Big Black, especially because Steve Albini, the ex frontman of Big Black, is their recording engineer. I think "recording engineer" is a title Albini made up, but it's basically the same thing as a producer. According to him, the difference is recording engineers solve problems in capturing sound, while letting the artist have complete control; on the other hand producers will often take control and ruin records. The Jesus Lizard's music often features a mix of low rolling guitars and bass, harsh shrieking guitars, slow drums, and weird shouted muffled vocals.         It's kind of hard to tell, but the cover of Goat is a naked woman with some image projected on her. To be honest, I'm ...
Post a Comment
Read more