?uestlove's protean skills have helped make the Roots one of rap's best live bands — though recently they've mastered the trick of not sounding much like a band at all. Their last two albums jettisoned their warm-and-fuzzy neosoul stylings for denser modern production, and Rising Down is their swampiest album yet. Songs like "The Show" are coated in synths as thick and murky as Dirty Southern molasses, and "Get Busy" encircles ?uestlove's thudding downbeat with distorted digital buzzes and some feverish scratching from guest DJ Jazzy Jeff.

It's a sound that fits the dark subject matter. Named after William T. Vollmann's book on violence and released on the 16th anniversary of the Rodney King riots in L.A., Rising Down is the Roots' most political album. The songs sound like a late-Bush-era cry of anguish over crises local and global, from urban poverty to climate change. The vivid "Lost Desire" paints scenes of street violence that could be in Philly or Fallujah: "The seasons are done and the reasons are none/People dying bullets flying 'cause they squeezin' for fun."

Rapper Black Thought is in his comfort zone playing the firebrand. But he's so terminally stern that even his jokes sound like harangues; he hasn't quite mastered the wit that makes protest songs (and "conscious rap" songs) go down easier. (Rising Down's all-star team of guests — Common, Mos Def, Talib Kweli — isn't much of a help.) In the warp-speed freestyle "75 Bars (Black's Reconstruction)," the rapper spits out dozens of rhymes, none of which succeed in producing even a faint smile. Luckily, ?uestlove adds some much-needed levity, playing a wicked pas de deux with sousaphone player Tuba Gooding Jr. — whose stage name offers the album's only good punch line.

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JODY ROSEN

(Posted: May 15, 2008)