Leftover Metrocard Change Infuriates Some
UPDATE: City To Remove 14 Blocks Of Bike Lanes On Bedford Ave.
Hamster Rides The 4 Train
2nd Avenue Subway Cooling System Will "Blight" UES
Should Payphones Be Free?
A friend who emailed us a few weeks ago to inform us that the Beastie Boys were releasing a new album and that it was going to be all instrumental left us conflicted. We'll admit that the instrumental portion of their last shows at the Garden were great, but we wouldn't consider them highlights, and we generally judge their last tour a high-point of our concert-going existence. A week or so later, this same friend sent us a link to a video that the Beastie Boys released on their site. The video opens in black and white, with the band wearing dark suits and ties; an electric organ starts the song. "Oh no," one might be tempted to think, the Beastie Boys have suffered a middle-aged breakdown and are reincarnating themselves as a subdued Blues Brothers. Anyone concerned that "To the 5 Boroughs" was a farewell album and that the Beastie Boys performance at MSG was some type of NYC farewell address should take comfort in that the trio is not nearly ready to go silent into that good night. That we even hesitated to doubt the born-and-bred New Yorkers leaves us embarrassed.
The one-song sample we've heard so far is phenomenal, with electric organ opening into a killer bass line accompanied by high hat with falsetto guitar and rimshots that eventually just explodes. The brilliantly witty lyrics are absent, surely, but the trio performs a studio-filling embodiment of funk that is exhilarating to the extreme. After 4mins and 55 seconds, we went from ambivalent, to the most excited we've ever been about an album release. It's on sale June 5. We just found the soundtrack for our summer.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
"That we even hesitated to doubt the born-and-bred New Yorkers leaves us embarrassed."
Take writing lessons. Please.
BASS line
The fact that I was a bass player for several years makes that so embarassing! I'm always thinking of PE's "Bass! How low can you go?" double entendre, however and get confused when writing in a hurry. Still: humiliating. Thanks for the pickup!
Paul, I actually love when people point out errors (see above) and I appreciate style pointers. I can't stand, however, when people make pointed criticisms and don't elaborate when a mistake isn't obvious. To me, your pointer is not obvious. Style points can be taste-based, so just innocuously objecting is less than helpful. It can be very frustrating because I'll examine and re-examine a sentence for ages, looking for a flaw that may or may not be there. If you want to accuse me of illiteracy, PLEASE do me the favor specifying. I want to be literate, so help me out.
The song's a bit mediocre. If some no-name band were playing it nobody would care.
Looks like we're still stuck in a "to be utterly lame is to be cool" phase, as is evident in the popularity of bands like Arcade Fire, etc.
At least Arcade Fire has some interesting song-writing though.
This is utter shit. I was playing (and writing) at a higher level in 8th grade and that's no exaggeration. Don't get me wrong, I love the Beasties and it's not even the lo-fi quality that bothers me; this new direction is just misguided and I'd like to think that they have more talent than this.
I think Paul singled out that line because it's unclear. "Hesitated to doubt" implies that you resisted doubt, and have since become doubtful. You probably meant "hesitated" as in "paused," but that's not the way it reads.
There's probably an English-major term for such muddiness, but that's my layman's explanation.
I think the term you're looking for is ambiguity.
We thought the combination of "even hesitated to doubt" was an indication of ambiguity, perhaps we just should have said we were "ambiguous about". We'll take a beating on our diction, certainly, we just appreciate our criticisms direct and clear, like all of yours.
i had the same reaction as the writer. good to hear them making great music again. i looked on their site and saw something about an eventual remake of the album sort of like beck/guero with guest vocals, but none from them. im excited for festival season
To the poster that thinks it is lame......their instrumentals are all the bases for their songs......ie In Sounds From The Way Out.
They never claimed to be master musicians and what they created here is fun and totally recognizabe as the Beasties style.
Thanks for the tip. I'm a big fan of this track as well. Great to see a group putting out music they like rather than always trying to maximize commercial success. That being said, I'm sure they'll sell more than a few albums with that old school funk.
something tells me i wouldnt be nearly as into this if the video weren't so cool.