CHRIS
I was very apprehensive about this album. I couldn’t deal with another ‘Hello Nasty’. Another album at nearly an hour long and pushing twenty tracks. So, imagine my amazement when I looked at the track listing and it clocked in at only 43-ish minutes! What a find, eh? I was still worried about 15 tracks, but I let this slip.
I set off on a morning walk – luckily long enough to hear the album in one sitting – and it was ok. Nothing special. But, not bad. This, under the circumstances, was a relief. Up until now, apart from ‘Ill Communication’, had always been more towards negative. A disappointment. (That being said, I was 100% sure that ‘Ch-Check It Out’ has one of the clumsiest sounding choruses in recent pop history)
I finished the album and intended to return the next morning.
Throughout the idea I just kept thinking about New York – something I am sure they intend – and specifically my first visit whilst travelling round the States in 2009. In the planning stages of my trip I was positive that I wasn’t going to visit New York. The main focus of my journey was to visit the southern states as had been covered in my dissertation. Like the archetypal civil war soldier, I saw New York as brash. Simple. Somewhere you don’t get the ‘real America’. But, I discovered my friend lived there and a visit to see them was on the cards (in the end, even though I stayed in her flat she was actually away).
It would be the first of three visits to New York (including my honeymoon). I loved that city. Not the glitz and glamour of the films, but the grime, the sounds and pace of it. The billboards, the mix of voices, and the hustle and bustle.
That evening, with these memories swirling around, I was drawn back to the album. I heard a different album. No longer a collection of random songs it all felt coherent, like a map of the city. This is a guide to the city, but the city of the locals. Yes, the famous sites are mentioned, but they are a backdrop to life rather than the focus. Finally, the coherence lacking on the previous albums is finally evident. And, more importantly, it wasn’t a chore getting through the album. I think, overall, there is maybe only one song I don’t like (on a side note, i really think the album should have ended on An Open Letter To NYC).
This is the sound I wanted from the band. Tight, punchy drum kicks and interwoven with great rhymes. The album reminds me of more recent albums by Das Racist and the Cool Kids. Real driving rhythms. Great songs. The perfect formula. The songs used on the album, particularly Rappers Delight and Sonic Reducer, sound incredible.
It would be easy to call this their ‘9/11’ album, what with the lyrics on Open Letter. One could make a comment about how the overall lack of jokier lyrics, or the close, sometimes claustrophobic sounding beats, are a mirror of a city – three years later – still in mourning. But, more importantly, this album is a love letter to a city. A love for its people and of the streets. It is clear that yes it was a horrific event that destroyed two buildings. But what the Beastie Boys want to make clear is that buildings don’t make a city. People do. In doing that they have made an album that a city, and myself, can get behind.
MARTIN
Yes! Finally a Beastie Boys album I can fully appreciate and get behind.
I had high hopes for this one. I liked all the singles from it already, and I’d enjoyed all the live performances I’d seen of songs from it on various US chat shows etc. Thankfully these weren’t anomalies. This album delivers. Two listens on Spotify was enough to convince me to hand over the cash and buy the album.
As a collection of songs it’s just so much more focused than any album that came before it. Every album had it’s great moments but they all suffered from the “chuck enough shit at the wall and see what sticks” approach. This resulted in overlong albums trying to be everything all at once and actually ending up being not much as a whole.
To The 5 Boroughs dumps all the things that made me switch off or gaze at the clock during the other albums. It’s just 15 tracks of concise hip hop, each with its own hooks and individual feel. I’m surprised that the album has been described as boring by some of my fellow AiR alumni. It’s far and away the least boring to me.
Before this record, the Beastie Boys had a 32 percent score on the Hickey scale. Yes I worked it out with actual maths. A 1:2 shineola to shit ratio. One third wheat to two thirds chaff. This album raises that score considerably. There’s not a single song on it I don’t like. I did not expect this. I thought I had the Beasties figured out. So thanks Beastie Boys for making me question everything I thought I knew! Thanks for that!
I don’t think the album is as overtly “New York” as I was expecting, aside from Open Letter To Nyc obviously. But I wouldn’t have minded if it was. Like Chris, I love that city. I don’t think that has much effect on my appreciation of the album though. I just really think they’ve stepped it up with the songs. None of them feel like filler. They all keep the album moving forward. Right Right Now Now, Open Letter, The Brouhaha, Hey Fuck You and 3 The Hard Way all make it onto my ‘Best Of’. But really I could stick most of the album on there.
Adrock seems to have diversified his delivery too. There were times when I really didn’t know whose vocals I was hearing. Thankfully he tells you so often who he is, that it’s not a mystery for long.
With only two albums to go (one of which is instrumental so I doubt it’s as good as this one) it seems unlikely that they have enough time and material left to improve their overall score much more. It’s a shame they didn’t hit this stride earlier. Or at least trim off a lot of the unnecessary stuff which dragged previous albums down. Put a quarter in your ass boys cos you played yourself.
ROB
‘To The 5 Boroughs’ is the first Beastie Boys album that I can remember being released and paying attention to in some small way. But it’s odd listening back that the singles aren’t all that familiar. Yet, by the same token, they’re clearly the best songs on offer.
‘Ch-Check It Out’, ‘Right Right Now Now’, ‘Triple Trouble’ and in particular ‘An Open Letter to NYC’ are the Beastie Boys at their rhyme slinging best and having a strong set of singles certainly ensures there’s a good ebb and flow about ‘To The 5 Boroughs’ from the off.
Also, I think it’s important to stress that it is considerably – and I do mean considerably – more focussed than their previous efforts. In fact, I’d say it’s almost up there with ‘Paul’s Boutique’ as being my favourite Beasties effort. The main reason for this is simply because it’s an enjoyable listen and doesn’t concern itself with nonsense instrumentals. It loses momentum after ‘An Open Letter To NYC’ – but by then we’re an album’s worth of material in, which feels like real progress. It’s still perhaps a couple of songs too long, but this is something I think I’ve come to terms with regarding the Beastie Boys – they’re always gonna play the numbers game when it comes to album length. Like 8 songs on a 16 song album – it’s a high percentage of misses, but still gives you loads to play with on your ultimate Beasties playlist.
As we approach the end, listening to the Beastie Boys has also made me revaluate last month’s Sonic Youth trial. I guess the one thing I never appreciated at the time was the variety of Sonic Youth’s music. It does feel the Beastie Boys re-tread a lot of old ground. Which is fine, but having gone through 5 albums in a month (so far) it’s beginning to feel slightly monotonous. As an aside, I hated the swirling electronica backbeat to ‘An Open Letter to NYC’ on first listen, but was actually relieved on subsequent listens as it adds something different to their sound. And it’s these little flashes which I find I’m enjoying more than I expected.
Anyway, ‘To The 5 Boroughs’ is decent. Actually, it’s more than decent. It’s actually pretty bloody good, enjoyable and covers a broad spectrum of topics. It feels like it’s their most considered record yet and is a world away from the fratboy crap of their dim and distant past…
RORY
To The 5 Boroughs is The Beastie Boys with the handbrake on. I guess the redeeming feature is the lyrical content of this album, but when you put that on top of some of the blandest music they’ve ever created then I struggle to care. Ch-Check It Out and Triple Trouble are phenomenal, but the rest is boring.
REALLY BORING.
I like the Beastie Boys because musically they were taking risks and sure it didn’t all work, but it was exciting. This is dross. It is uniform I give them that, but it’s boring.
REALLY BORING.
I’m genuinely a bit offended at how safe this album is. I remember being disappointed when this came out and nothing has changed.
Beastie Boys I want you to release 29 track albums full of instrumentals and weird and wonderful hip hop. I don’t want you to release albums that feel like an old man gently muttering before he gives up and accepts death.
This feels like a band at the end of their life line.
You are better than this Boys.
LUKE
This is the album we all wanted, right? The Beasties took six years out and seemed to decide – at last – that they would benefit from cutting out the instrumental jazz-funk tracks and deliver some on-point hip-hop. Sounds great.
Or not. Some conversation among the AiR group has seen this album labelled as boring and dry. But why? It’s an underrated album. It’s been unfairly maligned as mawkish and overly serious due to the 9/11 connotations. Never known to rush things, it took the band three years to devise their tribute to New York City. It says a lot for the band as unofficial spokespeople for the city that it seemed people were anticipating their response. In truth, only three things have anything much to do with the city directly – the pencil sketch of the city skyline, Twin Towers intact, on the cover; an Open Letter To NYC; and this performance on David Letterman.
Given Big Dave’s recent retirement, it seems opportune to discuss that performance for a minute. The Boys had been quiet for six years, and emerged from the primordial sludge of the Noo Yoik subway to rap their way down the streets – their streets – into the studio to formally announce their return. There’s something iconic about it, which adds to the false mythology of the album as some sort of tragic paean to a broken city. True, an Open Letter to NYC is a defiant, at times touching rallying cry (“Dear New York, I hope you’re doing well/I know a lot’s happened and you’ve been through hell”), but there’s more going on here then a group therapy session.
The lyrics are much more serious, more political, more mature. This is no bad thing, especially since it was only a few weeks ago that we listened to Licensed To Ill. Right Right Now Now references the Columbine High School shootings, It Takes Time To Build blasts George W Bush for neglecting the Kyoto Treaty. On Hey Fuck You the band sound as angry as it’s likely they could ever get, criticising hack musicians (“I’m walkin’ on water while you’re stepping in shit/so put your sewer boots on before your ass gets lit”).
This all implies that the album is far too serious, but there’s a lot of fun here too. There’s Ad-Rocks’s cockney intro to the Rapper’s Delight-cribbing Triple Trouble, there’s the brief snippet of Jerry Seinfeld at the end of Hey Fuck You (“Wow, what a loser!”). Aside from the album MCA (as his Nathaniel Hornblower alter-ego) sent a great letter to the New York Times in response to a negative review for Ch-Check It Out, suggesting their sense of fun was not necessarily diminishing just because they were adopting greater responsibility with their music.
The album’s final words capture the band’s agenda at this time, telling the listener that they’ve got the power to make a difference. To put it another way, they were fighting for more than our right to party by this point in their careers. It’s a shame they only had one ‘proper’ album left.
artistinresidence 