The concept album can be treacherous grounds for any band. Stevie Wonder’s “The Secret Life of Plants” tried to give voices to our little green mute friends, but ended with too much sap. On a far-away other hand, Coheed and Cambria made an entire career off ill-advised concept albums, a habit that spun out of its musical orbit into full-blown comic books. (They may get a pass: Concept albums are pretty much de rigueur for prog-rock bands.)
But having just come off a concept album—and a great one, at that—it was strange to hear the Roots next album would be conceptual. However, despite this obvious similarity, these albums are their own stories (or vice versa) . 2011’s “Undun” revolved around the downward spiral of a singular character, the once-promising Redford Stevens, while “…And Then You Shoot Your Cousin” presents a pastiche of several character sketches in “the trap,” each in broad strokes and grimly shadowed.
If you aren’t digging for meaning, the lyrics of “…And Then” will float through your ears without notice. The streets’ disadvantaged and circumstantially doomed is heavily trodden territory for the Roots, and nothing about these approximated stories stands out in particular. To complicate matters, these characters are purposeful generalizations, imprints of imprints ostensibly designed to highlight these stereotypes. Itap a very Roots move, but ultimately impossible to suss out unless you’ve been prompted. Once you get it, it adds needed nuance to the glimpses of the 40-ounces for breakfast of “Understand” and perennially shit-out-of-luck hood of “Never.” Otherwise, the concept fails to deliver its ambitious message.
Musically, the album needs no foreward. Shrieking strings and plodding pianos overtake Mercedes Martinez’s guest ballad “The Coming.” ?uestlove’s steady snares provide the casual listener with something to grab ahold of, though “Tomorrow” and “When People Cheer” are the only songs you’d want to take out of context of the album and stick in any sort of playlist. The latter song is the closer, and also the album’s finest moment. Itap categorically opposed to the rest of the album in tone, a glimmer of sunshine at the end of a murky tunnel, though even itap message is subtly grim.
“…And Then You Shoot Your Cousin” doesn’t have the impact of “Undun,” and suffers from its generalizing lofty concept. It has moments of musical beauty, but whether it’s worth digging into the layers the Roots have set beyond the sound is questionable.
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Dylan Owens is Reverb’s all-purpose news blogger and album reviewer. You can read more from him in Relix magazine and the comment sections of WORLDSTARHIPHOP.
