Crash Richard
BIOGRAPHY
Crash Richard’s Sensitive Devil Tells a Deeply Personal Story Across Cities, Generations, and Genres
Crash Richard didn’t set out to become LA’s most quietly compelling sensitive devil. But after years with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros — and co-founding the Deadly Syndrome, whose Dim Mak debut The Ortolan earned cult admiration — the New Orleans native returns with a record that’s personal, political, and raw enough to bleed.
Sensitive Devil is what happens when a double Gemini with a designer’s hands and a street performer’s heart turns inward — drawing songs from the hollows of the American plight, the family tree, and the strange weight of staying human in a fraying world.
Born to a Cajun family outside New Orleans, Crash moved west after Katrina with a week of laundry and a string of gigs. In LA, he built sets, played bit parts — including a surreal stint as a youthful Santa Claus in a series of national commercials — and eventually joined Edward Sharpe full-time. Between tours, he quietly shaped a sound of his own.
The title Sensitive Devil isn’t just a persona — it’s a reflection. While tracing his ancestry, Crash discovered his great-great-grandfather was born in Jamaica, met his future wife in Belize, and settled in Louisiana. “It made sense,” he says. “Of course this is the family that went from Jamaica to Belize to New Orleans and started over.”
That legacy — fractured, resilient, full of movement — echoes through the record’s central question: How do you keep feeling in a world built to numb?
The album was recorded with Kosta Galanopoulos in a modest home studio in Eagle Rock, a hillside neighborhood on LA’s east side. With a few trusted collaborators, Crash tracked vocals at odd hours, bounced mixes off bedroom walls, and leaned into imperfection. The result hums with intimacy, dust, and persistence.
“Fool Moon (Cruised)” turns romantic yearning into cosmic rebellion — lush, lunar, and full of impossible longing. “On the Run (Looking Out)” honors the quiet bravery of staying soft in a world that demands armor. It’s a plea for peace disguised as a lullaby.
“Swan AAA +1” grapples with our constant need to want — restless, unsatisfied. The gift of life is already the highest form of royalty and status. “In the Hollow” came from a drive through North Philadelphia, where the air felt heavy with effort. It’s a meditation on survival, what Crash calls “the sound of a neighborhood trying its best, but barely holding.”
Lyrically, the album toggles between confession and critique—what he calls “rhythm and griping“ rather than rhythm and blues. Crash doesn’t emote so much as reveal, his phrasing careful, cracked, and full of coded warmth.
Recorded quietly and without a deadline, Sensitive Devil isn’t chasing trends. It’s carving a groove of its own. “I just want to keep chipping away,” Crash says. “I’ve seen how unpredictable and beautiful it can all be.”
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