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!

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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

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