Roots at their best as a live band

A few months ago, the Roots played a blistering set at Summer Stages, the Indianapolis music festival. The intense, high-energy show proved that, at its best, modern hip hop is not just a studio phenomenon. It also showed that the Roots are perhaps the premier practitioners of honest-to-goodness live hip hop, a band that does not depend on producers and studio tricks to display its greatness.\nWhile they tried admirably, the Roots fail to capture that live magic on their oft-delayed, highly anticipated latest studio release, Phrenology. Named after a long-discredited and often-racist brand of science that attempted to measure mental ability through the study of the shape and irregularities of the skull, the album presents the band members trying to match the brilliance of 1999's Things Fall Apart.\nPhrenology features a few changes to the group's line-up after the recent, tension-filled departure of rapper Malik B. and the arrival of rock guitarist Ben Kenney. With its latest release, the band has produced a sprawling, intensely personal work containing several hits but also a few misses. \nThe CD features some rousing gems. The insistent, urgent beats of "Rock You" set the tone for the album, while "Thought @ Work" is a wonderfully noisy, frenetic cut that features jazzy samples and complex rhythms. The best track on the CD is "The Seed (2.0)," an earnest, rocking cut featuring lovely vocals by guest Cody ChesnuTT and sublime guitar work by Kenney.\nBut the centerpiece of the album is "Water," a 10-minute-plus epic that at times sounds vaguely like it belongs on David Bowie's Heroes. It's brooding, atmospheric and ambitious; it's also a bit unfocused and meandering.\nBut even though "Water" and a few other tracks go astray, overall Phrenology is better than 95 percent of the hip hop on the market today. While it's not the classic Things Fall Apart was, and while it can't measure up to the Roots' incredible live shows, Phrenology is still essential listening for anyone searching for more than what the often-shallow plethora of pop hip hop can offer.