The cop-out
I have to preface the following review with the following cop-out: I wanted to like the new Beastie Boys album. I wanted to LOVE the new Beastie Boys album. I wanted the Boys to prove that they still had it, they're still on it, they're still in it, they can still hold their own against the above-ground Eminems and the underground Themselves of the world. Alas...

Track one, the hit
Radio added the new Beastie Boys single "Ch-check It Out" because it's the new Beastie Boys single. I have not heard a single person say that they loved it on first listen. It's straight-ahead, safe, unmistakeable Beastie Boys, and I'll admit, it's grown on me. It's also the high-point of the album. Tune into your local "Alternative" radio station, you'll probably hear it.

Tracks two, three, four, and five
Are the same song, four times over. Dark beats dominate all four, apprently from the same set of drum samples. Each track has it's own subtle differences, each with varying degrees of success:

Track two ("Right Right Now Now") features an Eminem/Aerosmith-inspired "Sing for the Moment" harpsichord loop. I hated the harpsichord when Tori Amos used one through an entire album. My opinion hasn't changed.

Three ("3 The Hard Way") uses a pulsing, panning synth track and one of the few uses of turntablism on the album.

Four ("It Takes Time to Build") uses, uh, a pulsing, panning synth track.

Five ("Rhyme the Rhyme Well"), has an UNKLE-esque, modulated string track, which makes sense, since Mike D worked with UNKLE (James Lavelle and DJ Shadow) on their CD Psyence Fiction in 1998, which also happens to be the same year that "Hello Nasty", the Beasties last album, came out. This is the best song of the four, but primarily because I'm an UNKLE fan.

Track Six
I'm willing to let Ad-Rock's horrible English accent at the beginning of the song slide (for whatever reason, he uses it on and off through the entire track). Sampling "Rapper's Delight" is a sure-fire way to win over hip-hoppers young and old, and it works here. Upbeat and fun, "Triple Trouble" is what I was hoping the whole album would sound like.

Hey, fuck you
With a title like "Hey, Fuck You", I was expecting so much more. Another mid-tempo track with weak challenge rhymes to anonymous whack MCs. Hey, guys...

Tracks eight, nine, ad nauseum
"I go with the flow, though the tempo varies...": Not so much, as the majority of the album suffers from the mid-tempo blahs.

All Lifestyles
Track Ten picks up the pace a little bit, and keeps things interesting with a wormy bassline and some mediocre scratching. I'm not sure why, but the scratching and turntable work that used to be at the fore of Beastie Boys records is now relegated to back ground noise, very low in the mix and nothing to get up and shout about. Mixmaster Mike, where art thou?

Reverb
One has to figure that the Beastie Boys probably have an unlimited production budget, yet they insist on using EXACTLY the same reverb processing on EVERY track, which is why I'm not even going to bother mentioning track eleven, "Shazam!" beyond here.

The Dead Boys
So maybe the Beastie Boys are dead. Maybe it is over. Maybe their use of a guitar loop from The Dead Boys "Sonic Reducer" on "An Open Letter to NYC" was slightly prophetic. What could have been an uplifting, unifying track is a 4 minute and 18 second snooze-fest. And to co-opt Local H's "California Songs": "Please no more California songs, and fuck New York, too."

Crawlspace
Would have been much better if De La Soul had done it, but does contain the best line on the album: "There's a party going on in here. I've got more product than Ron Popeil".

Fourteen and (mercifully) fifteen
"The Brouhaha" and "We Got The" round out this 15 track disappointment. "The Brouhaha" sounds phoned-in and uninspred. And contains another harpsichord sample. I still hate harpsichord. "We Got The" is fun and positive, but is too little, too late.

And another thing
I don't let my politics mix with my music, but devoting almost a quarter of your album to anti-Bush and anti-war slogans seems a little much. One strong one probably would have sufficed.

Miserable bitch
I apologize to any Beastie Boys fans I may have offended. Again, I wish I had received 15 tracks of brilliance. I wish that the 6 year wait would have been worth it. But, again, alas...

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