roots run deep
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8/3/2019 Roots Run Deep
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Words With Fracas
Alec Baldwin shutsdown his Twitter feedafter airline dispute
Read Marc’s previous columns at:
expressnightout.com/muse
Nobody Loves AmyThe year’s most appealingly tragi-
omic series is about to end its rookie
eason. “Enlightened” (HBO, Mon-
ays, 9:30 p.m.) is a portrait of a mad
orporate slave. Amy Jellicoe (the
ncomparable Laura Dern, above)
hreatens to kill her ex-lover at a soul-
ucking health conglomerate, blam-
ing him for her transfer
to a less glamorous
job. Hawaiian rehab
restores her sanit—
or does it? Back at
work and eager to be
an “agent of change,”
she is always late, she
pursues personal do-
ooder projects on company time, and
he relentlessly chats up colleagues
who think she’s crazy.
Amy’s private life is equally messy.
She’s moved in with Mom (Dern’s real-
fe mother, Diane Ladd), queen of the
withering comment: “You look awful.Are you going to go to work like that?”
And she reconnects with her drug-
sing ex (laid-back Luke Wilson).
Monday’s finale has a typical mix of
ly humor, oppressive earnestness and
rustrating irresolution — and another
xtraordinary performance by Dern,
who can turn ravishing or careworn,
piritual or sensual, with a mere glance.
Ratings have been OK, but no deci-
ion’s been made about the show’s fu-
ure. HBO: Enlighten us with more!
P R A S H A N T G U P T A / H B O
A stunt for the Discover Channel show “MythBusters” sent an errant cannonball through a Cal-
ifornia family’s house and into a parked minivan a few hundred feet away. The cannonball, fired at a sheriff’s depart-
ment bomb range on Tuesday, was supposed to go through a few water-filled barrels and a concrete wall. Instead, it
passed over the barrels and through the wall, and then took a skyward bounce. No injuries were reported. (AP)
Fillmore, 8656 Colesville Road,
Silver Spring; Dec. 29 & 30, 8 p.m., $54;
301-960-9999, Fillmoresilverspring.
com. (Silver Spring)
There are some incredibly evoca-
tive songs on the Roots’ new album,
“undun.” The electronic pulse of
“Sleep” sounds like molten gold
dripping from a leaky spigot. The
bass at the finale of “Make My”
plows tunnels through the cumu-lus Alps of heaven.
So it’s too bad the one song that
the Roots will likely be remembered
for in 2011 is a 16-second swatch of
Fishbone’s “Lyin’ A-- B----.”
As the house band on “Late
Night With Jimmy Fallon,” the Phil-
adelphia-born hip-hop collective
recently spat up the rowdy ska tune
as Republican presidential hopeful
Michele Bachmann traipsed out
onstage for an interview.
The band considered it a joke.
Certain corners of the media con-
sidered it an outrage. NBC apolo-
gized to Bachmann and “severely
reprimanded” the Roots. Last week,
bandleader Questlove said the stunt was “absolutely not” worth it.
But regardless of whether the
decision was in poor taste, it under-
scored a bigger point about the
Roots: The band members might
spend their work week taking
Fallon in and out of commercial,
but they’ve never stopped think-
ing of themselves as artists.
It’s an idea addressed more
explicitly with “undun,” the group’s
most adventurous outing since 1999’s
“Things Fall Apart.” But where that
triumph folded hip-hop into new
shapes like so much origami paper,
“undun” slowly allows itself to spread
in every direction, the way water
spills across a tabletop.
That’s just the music, though.
Lyrically, this is a concept album
with a linear narrative that front-
man Black Thought follows with
admirable discipline. The story
begins with the death of a semi-fic-
tional drug dealer named Redford
Stephens, imitating the last-scene-
first device Hollywood is fond of.
After an opening drone that sug-
gests a flat-lining EKG monitor, Black
Thought raps from the perspective of
a spirit freshly escaped from the body:
“From a man to a memory. ... I wonder
if my fam will remember me.”
Then, back to the beginning, where Stephens’s life slowly takes
shape and quickly splinters. Differ-
ent voices step in to inhabit his first-
person, including rising Mississip-
pi rapper Big K.R.I.T. and longtime
Roots collaborator Dice Raw.
In the meantime, the band han-
dles each of these delicate backing
tracks with a pleasing and elegant
touch. The album closes with an
orchestral suite that’s every bit as
lovely as the beat-driven stuff on
the front end.
Two Decembers ago, Quest-
love said he was paranoid about
the Roots’ being known merely as
“Jimmy Fallon’s band.” Hopeful-
ly, he’s gotten over that. The Roots
have inarguably made television a
better place for music, while life on
television has inarguably made theRoots a better band.
Let’s hope they never quit
the ir day job. Or get f ired .CHRIS RICHARDS (THE WASHINGTON POST)
Jimmy Fallon’s house band hits itsartistic peak on the conceptual ‘undun’
The Roots
D E F J A M