MattA75's Full Review: To the 5 Boroughs [PA] [Digipak] by Beastie Boys
It isn't a simple concept: if you're going to take six years in between albums, you had better be creating something that blows my mind so much, that I'm intimidated to review it for eight months (see Tool's Lateralus album).
Sadly though, the new Beastie Boys album, To The 5 Boroughs, doesn't blow my mind, at least not in the good way, and to be honest, I'm more intimidated about the "you're nuts, the Beasties ROOL DOOD!!" comments I'm sure to get for this review. Well, in the words of the Beasties themselves, Hey F*ck You.
Let's start with the beats. With no live instrumentation on the record (if there is, I sure can't hear it), the group relies on samples and electronic blips and bleeps to create the background noise. I'm the first to admit I'm no hip hop afficionado, but I'm not completely braindead on the subject either. The beats here are, with a couple of exceptions, absolutely irritating to the max. Let's not even get into how repetitive they are, the constant blasts of turntable noise (not scratches, but noise). The group uses a sample of Rapper's Delight on Triple Trouble, a song that by any other group would be considered by the majority of people to be a piece of sh*t.
The whole sound of the record is sterile, artificial, and processed. The group's vocals are too often pushed into the background behind the beat, which might not be so bad if the beats were better, but they're not. A good example of this is the first single (and lead track on the record, which is quickly becoming a warning sign more than ever before) Ch-Check It Out, a blaring piece of irritation that's harder to shake than a bad case of hemorrhoids.
Essentially, the album has two types of songs: those that are overtly political, and those that recall the goofy type of songs the Beasties have made a career out of. At times though, the boys don't know which one they're doing. That's It That's All takes a shot at Bush and then degenerates into a goofy song that at times seems to be about empowering people to take action ("intention leads to action, that is my theme...") and others seems to have no real connection to the rest of the song thematically ("got a hairy a*s and that's no fun").
The group's love letter to the post 9/11 NYC, creatively titled An Open Letter to NYC, is the type of rap song Grammy voters love, what with it's celebration of diversity and solidarity. The song would've worked better had they just used the simple beat that drives the song, but instead there's some "elements (as it's referenced in the liner notes)" from the Dead Boys' classic punk song Sonic Reducer. Unfortunately, the group pulled nothing more than annoying feedback type noise off of this song, instead of say, a driving guitar or something else that would've enhanced the song rather than make it nearly unlistenable.
At times, the songs work, though they are few and far between. Crawlspace has a smooth beat to it and a decent flow that makes it easier to ignore some of the horrible lyrics it has ("here's a match, my a*s and your face"). 3 the Hard Way finds Adam Yauch going through a plethora of languages in no time, and the diss toward file sharers toward the end ("if you sell our CD's on Canal before we make 'em, then we will have no other alternative but to serve you on a platter like Steak-umm") probably appeals to me because I know what Steak-umms were.
The group's political correctness becomes annoying though, and no better example exists than It Takes Time To Build, where essentially, the Beasties message is that maybe if we hug Osama Bin Laden, he won't attack us anymore. Now look, the whole war in Iraq thing is BS, but when 3,000 Americans are killed, and our financial and military headquarters are bombed with hijacked planes, it's called an act of war. That doesn't justify the BS war in Iraq, but it sure as f*ck justifies going into Afghanistan and wherever else Mr Bin Laden might be hiding. I'm sorry if this upsets the Beastie Boys, but I'm sure Osama needs more than a hug.
What it comes down to is that To The 5 Boroughs is a frustrating listen. The "party" tracks are goofy and disjointed, and the political tracks are simple-minded and uncreative. For a group that supposedly hates Bush, they sure take it easy on him here. But you know, song titles like Hey F*ck You and lines like "we're gonna rock this motherf*cker like 3 the hard way" must have taken them a long time to come up with.
Maybe I wouldn't dislike this album as much if it came out after a 2 or 3 year wait. But after six years, this is all the group has to say about what went on in that time?
It s official: the hiatus is over. To the 5 Boroughs, The Beastie Boys sixth album, is in the can and ready for mass consumption. Recorded over the la...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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