Guardian Album Review UK 11/06/2004

[Parkey]

A pretty short and underwhelming review from today's Guardian Newspaper.

Beastie Boys, To the 5 Boroughs

(Parlophone)

Alexis Petridis
Friday June 11, 2004
The Guardian

In January, anyone with $10,000 to spare could have bid for what was once the world's hippest record label: The Beastie Boys' Grand Royal, bankrupt and up for internet auction.
The label's 2001 closure brought the curtain down on the New York trio's decade-long reign as global avatars of cool, and their first album in six years retreats from the cutting-edge into comfortingly familiar territory: the 1980s hip-hop that first brought them mainstream success.

The beats bounce along happily enough, particularly on the dubby Crawlspace and Dead Boys-sampling An Open Letter to NYC, but the stripped-down sound focuses attention on the anti-Bush lyrics, and that proves to be the album's undoing.

Not even the most hysterical Beastie Boys fan would claim them as great wordsmiths, and political conviction doesn't appear to have sharpened their skills. "George W's got nothing on we," suggests a typical line from That's It That's All. "We got to take the power from he." Indeed us do, but this is a strangely underwhelming way to go about it.