Crampton was inspired by Southern hip hop and crunk, Bolivian and Peruvian prog, metal and psych, trival/tribal-guarachero, black spirituals and early blues, psychedelic folk, and neo-classical music, as well as her brother's avant-garde records, and her grandfather's collection of huayno and cumbia tapes.

[3] In press photos for American Drift, Crampton was often depicted in forest settings, as well as holding a copy of Stacy Alaimo's Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self.

Lyrically, it references Paul Claudel's poetic cycle "The Way of the Cross" and the Christian hymn "Rock of Ages", and depicts the "wildly disanthropocentric" transformation of natural settings.

[2] Philip Sherburne, writing for Pitchfork, described American Drift as artistically evoking "a hillside that's been worn away by erosion to reveal a sedimentary record of the millennia".

'[5] Nick James Scavo, writing for Tiny Mix Tapes, commented that 'the beauty of Crampton's art is that it gorgeously describes a drifting, transitional nature — to pin it down is to forget its essence, to rob it of movement.