Beastie Boys

Six years after their last LP, the Beasties return with their inimitable mix of spazzed-out wordplay and classic-meets-futuristic beats. Though they're all pushing 40 now, they still have the mentality of teenagers in their songs, save for a few politically-minded verses. "Right Right Now Now," "Triple Trouble," and "An Open Letter To NYC" are outstanding.

These are some things that have changed since the Beastie Boys' last studio album, Hello
Nasty, was released in 1998: There is no Grand Royal Records; the trio shut down its
eccentric custom label in 2001. Adam "MCA" Yauch's deep, rough growl is now an even
deeper, stranger weapon of taunt; he now fires boasts and insults like a hip-hop Tom Waits,
in a smoker's-cough harangue scoured free of melody. And there is no World Tr... More >

Don't let the hipsters scare you away. "An Open Letter to NYC" is as inarticulate as most love letters, so hackneyed Mike D could be gunning for an October engagement at Yankee Stadium. But from "We've got a president we didn't elect" to "It's time we looked past all our differences," many clichés here are worth recycling, as with the black (sounding) hype man who reinforces the one about differences with a faint but unmistakable "that's fresh fresh, for a Jewboy, Jewboy, Jewboy." As much as Jay-Z, and with more jokes, the Beasties are masters of their sound, of which this is the old-school variant. Like the Catskill shticksters they honor, they crack wise as naturally as John Hurt drawled, only with a better sense of rhythm (than the shticksters). They sound sharp-witted even when they mouth homilies. They sound like the reason uppity Queens boys used to think the 7 train was bound for Jordan. (Grade - A-)