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ALBUM REVIEWS
Maroon 5
Travis Schneider*
Way back when, Dylan and the Beatles demonstrated how musicians could evolve dramatically, overhauling their sound on record once or even twice a year. They were hardly alone, but few others shape-shifted during than era like Tim Buckley. By 1968, the L.A.-via-Orange-Country troubadour was moving beyond the keening-balladeer mode of his early work — a mere two years before — and gravitating toward jazz and improvisational music. That exhilarating shift, a key period in his career, is documented in this newly unearthed live tape, recorded that year at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco by the late sonic wizard (and acid impresario) Owsley “Bear” Stanley.
The sense that Buckley was already outgrowing any sort of new-Dylan expectations on him arrives pretty much right away. The album opens with “Buzzin’ Fly,” that musical snuggle blanket that captures the rush of new love, the joy of discovery. Other than stretching out a few words to extra syllables, Buckley sings it much as he would on Happy Sad, which wouldn’t be out for almost another year.
But by the second song, “I Don’t Need It to Rain,” he’s starting to leave conventions behind – and not just in its lyrics, the oblique and borderline kinky tale of an “undercover tinsel queen.” His musicians – bassist John Miller, vibes player David Friedman and percussionist Carter “C.C.” Collins – lock into a folky-improv groove behind him, and Buckley starts flying. Over the course of nine minutes, his voice is howling, moaning, swallowing syllables, and emitting muted yodels, and he’s slamming chords on his 12-string.
The most hypnotic parts of Merry-Go-Round at the Carousel pick up where that command performance leaves off. Buckley drops his voice up and down several octaves on a version of the folk standard “Green Rocky Road,” and he becomes a fervent folk preacher on the newly discovered “Blues, Love.” It’s telling that he dispatches accessible songs like “Happy Time” and “Sing a Song for You” in a few minutes’ time, but then dives headfirst into “Merry-Go-Round” by his hero, Fred Neil. There, Buckley begins with Neil’s words, sung in the voice of a black child in the South — wandering a circus and looking for his own playground there – before shifting to a few verses of Lead Belly’s “In the Pines.” Buckley then pivots to his own ad-libbed lines about women and race, finally wrapping up the song (with some of his own, Miles Davis-inspired “Strange Feelin'”) 11 minutes later. Here and elsewhere, Miller’s upright bass serves as both Buckley’s musical backbone and its partner in improv. As with Phil Lesh in the Grateful Dead, Miller is as much lead guitarist as bass player, and he and Friedman lend a smokey-jazz-club feel to the songs.
Buckley’s devotion to pushing his voice and his art would soon lead to albums like Starsailor, a collection of musical zigzags that, over 50 years later, remains one of the most daunting albums ever made. That journey starts on recordings like these. For any other “folksinger” – a term barely suitable for describing Buckley – it would be anathema to stop a song midway through so that your conga player could take a long, unaccompanied solo. For Buckley, it was just another day at the ballroom.
Way back when, Dylan and the Beatles demonstrated how musicians could evolve dramatically, overhauling their sound on record once or even twice a year. They were hardly alone, but few others shape-shifted during than era like Tim Buckley. By 1968, the L.A.-via-Orange-Country troubadour was moving beyond the keening-balladeer mode of his early work — a mere two years before — and gravitating toward jazz and improvisational music. That exhilarating shift, a key period in his career, is documented in this newly unearthed live tape, recorded that year at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco by the late sonic wizard (and acid impresario) Owsley “Bear” Stanley.
The sense that Buckley was already outgrowing any sort of new-Dylan expectations on him arrives pretty much right away. The album opens with “Buzzin’ Fly,” that musical snuggle blanket that captures the rush of new love, the joy of discovery. Other than stretching out a few words to extra syllables, Buckley sings it much as he would on Happy Sad, which wouldn’t be out for almost another year.
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If a video game allowed you to create a rapper with all the statistics needed to attract mass attention in today’s digital climate, the figure you end up with might look like Philadelphia newcomer Skrilla. Physically, he’s regionless—or, better yet, doesn’t read as belonging to a specific American city. His understated fashion sense (primarily all black) is indicative of present-day Northeastern simplicity, where Nike Tech sweatsuits, Under Armour tracksuits, North Face bubble jackets reign. His long dreads and mouthful of gold slugs could land him below the Mason-Dixon or even in the Bay Area. Musically, his work isn’t technically drill because it doesn’t prioritize violence but, in texture and sound, it evokes palpable darkness. The distribution and use of addictive substances is a recurring theme in his work. And, most crucial to his rise over the past year, Skrilla is adept at engineering a mixture of fascination and revulsion with his visual output; you’ll want to look away out of sheer discomfort while still sneaking a peek because you can’t believe what’s happening.
The rapper staunchly represents Kensington—or, as he calls it, ZombieLand—a section of Philly that has long drawn headlines due to what’s often called the biggest open-air drug market in the United States. Like many deindustrialized areas along the Rust Belt, the neighborhood is weathering an opioid crisis; images of folks maimed by faulty injections or inebriated to the point of immobility have become fodder for social media spectacle in a way that, at the very least, feels like barely cloaked exploitation. However genuine his connection to the area and its citizens, this is the foundation of Skrilla’s rap persona. For the past two years, his videos and performances have featured, to varying degrees, people noticeably dealing with addiction. Sometimes they surround him while he’s rapping, many clearly uncomfortable in front of the camera. Sometimes they gleefully dance along to the brooding production. Sometimes, he’s administering Narcan to save someone from an overdose.
Zombie Love Kensington Paradise, Skrilla’s late 2024 project, underlined his affinity for the neighborhood while displaying his vocal flexibility and off-kilter delivery. A new deluxe version, which adds eight new tracks to the existing 19, suggests that, at his best, the Philly native could very well be on the road to rap stardom. Zombie Love’s deluxe starts with the Thankutimmy and Paculiarbeatz-produced “Big Opp,” a convincing opener in which Skrilla makes a compelling case for his skill for knowing how to utilize space. Rather quickly, he goes from listing off a number of potent substances (codeine, horse tranquilizers, oxycodone) to gleefully talking about his taste in fashion before stressing that he has folks around him that’ll handle his dirty work. Delivered in a congested whine, it’s busy but still measured. There’s no hook—most of his songs don’t bother with having one. Instead, Skrilla administers chapter breaks with signature outbursts like “Goooo,” “What the fuuucck?” and “It’s me!”
Throughout the project, those vocal qualifiers are paired with a production style that’s become synonymous with Philly’s new wave of street music. From Ot7 Quanny to Hood Tali to Lil Buckss and beyond, the city’s rendition of drill is characterized by its minimalism: ominous chord loops, very sharp claps, spaced-out 808s, and not much else. That leaves ample room for Skrilla’s scattered musings. “Palo Mayombe,” which follows a similar template, continues Skrilla’s years-long interest in West and Central African spirituality—something he says he’s practiced at home since childhood. When he fantasizes about hopping out of his car to shoot an adversary, he stresses that he’s protected by Ogun, to whom he sacrifices chickens (if you follow him on Instagram, you’ve seen the aftermath). On the slightly more uptempo Prod.Yari-produced “NYFW,” he elects for a more animated flow and raises his voice to the point of cracking.
Zombie Love's most fun addition to its deluxe version is “ABC,” a song that was initially performed as an On The Radar freestyle in January of 2024 where Skrilla—exercising his love for spectacle—hilariously wore a brown Viking beard mask. Produced by Broward County’s Trippy XVI, Skrilla builds on the age-old hip-hop tradition of rapping your way through the alphabet. In his version, E is for the ecstasy he enjoys, R is for running on the plug, and, of course, Z is for ZombieLand. He cleverly breaks up the predictable nature of this formula by periodically repeating back letters to himself as to suggest he actually might be genuinely freestyling. The feverish way he powers through songs frames Skrilla as something of a twisted rap jester—a person who harnesses dark forces while appearing either indifferent or amused.
It doesn’t always click, mostly due to his inability to trim the fat. If most of Zombie Love Kensington Paradise—deluxe or original—had observed this balance of Philly drill, African spirituality, perfectly paced flows, and a healthy amount of shit-talking, it would be a much stronger project. Unfortunately, Skrilla often prioritizes collaboration with fellow upstarts, hard-to-turn-down features, and random experimentation. On “Maybach Seats” and “On That Money,” popular New Orleans rapper Rob49 throws around inconsequential lines; each song would have been better without him, but the way today’s street rap ecosystem operates, cross-country networking is essential to extend one’s reach. Lil Baby sounds lost on “Talk,” where he tries to adopt Skrilla’s start-and-stop approach to make his voice fit on a sinister Philly drill beat. “F.W.A.G.” and “Wockstar” are attempts at making melodic music aimed at a love interest, but both feel like bad impressions of South Florida’s Loe Shimmy.
Despite the missteps, Skrilla impresses when he dances through harrowing beats, coloring outside the lines to bring something jovial to what is otherwise sinister. He’s a rap weirdo following a long lineage of Philadelphia hip-hop outliers. At face value, maybe you don’t align his output to predecessors like Santigold, Tierra Whack (who has repeatedly shouted him out), or Lil Uzi Vert (the two have a handful of unofficial collaborations), but he’s closer to them than he is Meek Mill, Beanie Sigel, or even Ot7 Quanny. It’s just gonna take a little more time to find out whether his music will outshine his excessive use of shock value. So much music in the realm of drill already depends on caricature to accentuate its validity. If ZombieLand and its denizens are sources of Skrilla’s love and the cherished community he claims it to be, he should probably consider ways of exhibiting that relationship that run counter to treating it like a Youtuber conducting hood safaris.
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