HIP-HOP: The Roots, "Undun" (Def Jam)
The Roots have been so good for so long (two decades) that it's perhaps easy to take them for granted. The Philadelphia octet has a higher profile than ever as the house band for TV's "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," but somehow its excellent 2010 album, "How I Got Over," was overlooked. The same mistake shouldn't be made with "Undun," the 10th and best full-length studio album.
Over 14 tracks and 38 filler-free minutes, the album traces the birth, cold-sweat life and early death of a street hustler, consumed by paranoia, crack and unfulfilled dreams. In a way, "Undun" sounds like a continuation of the brooding first half of "How I Got Over." On the 2010 album, redemption eventually arrived. Here, there's no way out except in a casket, and the music underlines the tragedy: the episodic horn riffs of the haunted "Sleep," keyboards that chime like bells in "Make My" and slam with percussive force on "One Time," the kick-drum thunder of "Stomp," the rock-gospel feel of "The OtherSide."
?uestlove Thompson's beats come hard as a clenched fist, softened by pleading voices and the wrenching narratives of Black Thought, one of hip-hop's most underrated voices.
A gorgeous neo-classical suite closes the album. The band riffs on Sufjan Stevens' "Michigan" instrumental for a heartbreaking string coda. If an album can be both chilling and beautiful at once, "Undun" is it.
- GREG KOT, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
POP/ROCK: The Black Keys, "El Camino" (Nonesuch)
Rock 'n' roll is a formula, one with a few basic ingredients: rhythm, attitude, melody, volume and an undying belief in freedom through a few well-chosen chords. Why make it any more complicated than that? The Black Keys -- Patrick Carney on drums and Dan Auerbach on guitars and vocals -- are serious about this, and on their seventh record, prove it with 11 songs about love, lust, greed, desire, helplessness, heartbreak or some combination thereof.
Highlights? "Sister" contains a devastating opening that the band couples with a midtempo dance number with hand claps, a humming organ, a classic riff and hooks worthy of 1965-era Beatles. "Gold on the Ceiling" sounds as if it's existed forever. Same with "Run Right Back."
Part of the joy within "El Camino" is that it's butt-shaking music. "Dead and Gone" bounces along with the energy of something from the Clash's "London Calling"; "Stop Stop" features a fuzz guitar line half-ripped from the Electric Prunes' "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night." Add into this the simple truth that "El Camino" is an album with lyrics that are both unpretentious and un-dumb (no small feat), songs that should appeal both to the thugs and the thespians in your life, songs about opportunists ("Money Maker"), lines that describe being tortured by a lover with an evil streak ("Stop Stop").
