New Beastie Boys Album

To Buy or Not to Buy? Honestly, To the Five Boroughs kind of soured me on everything since Ill Communications.

Here's Pitchfork:

Looking at their arc from a purely musical perspective, you could divide their career in half at the midpoint of that decade-- at some point between 1994's Ill Communication and 1998's Hello Nasty. Their first four full-lengths came in less than eight years, and during this stretch, they were hungry and on the move, restlessly searching for new avenues of music expression. They're just now getting to their third proper album (fourth, if you want to count 2007's instrumental LP The Mix Up) in the 17 years since.

I think that's just about right. Hello Nasty is good, but not great, and they've only gotten older since. Every critic's desperate attempt to plump them up as "Beastie Men" or "engaged post-wiseasses," has failed to cover up the fact that they've lost their spark and are basically decaying into a Beastie Boys cover band.

But hey, I could be wrong.