colored vinyl with a bandana - In an era of dizzying genre shifts Meechy Darko, Erick the Architect Elliott, and Zombie Juice are stiff traditionalists. Removed from rap’s epicenter and comfortable at the margins, on Vacation in Hell, they rap for themselves and no one else. They sound both freed and confined.
Shedding the clunky cinematic husk of their previous album 3001: A Laced Odyssey, Vacation in Hell is streamlined and crisp. In lieu of skits and psychedelia, the Zombies opt for constant movement, passing the mic without ego, accenting each other with choice ad-libs, and avoiding dead air. All this motion produces a sort of newfound clarity. “Crown,” a glitzy collab with pop-rockers Portugal. The Man, punctuates John Gourley’s feathery vocals with fleet verses and builds to Meechy actually singing a beautifully spare bridge: “No one gets out alive/So we live like we already died/No one will ever understand but the sky.” On “U&I,” an ode to brotherhood, Erick Arc Elliott and Zombie Juice tenderly co-recite the chorus and briefly punch in before ceding nearly half the song’s runtime to a gripping Meechy verse. It’s a subtle and touching act of brotherly love.
| A1 | Hell-O |
| A2 | Chunky |
| A3 | Vacation |
| A4 | M. Bison |
| A5 | Headstone |
| B1 | Big Shrimp |
| B2 | Leather Symphony |
| B3 | Reel Girls |
| B4 | Facts |
| B5 | Ask Courtney |
| C1 | Crown |
| C2 | Proxies |
| C3 | U&I |
| C4 | The Goddess |
| D1 | Trapped |
| D2 | Best American |
| D3 | Misunderstood |
| D4 | Youaremysunshine |
| D5 | The Glory |
