#410 The Beastie Boys - Ill Communication

My appreciation for these guys have been growing, doing my homework albumwise.

I've been trying on a move away from "personal reaction" to "actual reviews" on here, despite the fact that a single listen hardly qualifies me as an authority on any of these. But I don't think I can get away from the context this time - I put my headphones on and started this as I walked around NYC for the first time, riding trains, getting lost, getting crowded out circa 5pm, streets and beats. My theory is the universe got me lost just long enough so that the album wouldn't end until my train to Jersey started on its way. The whole debacle soundtracked. I was heading to Penn Station, and if I had listened closely to B-Boys Makin' with the Freak Freak I would have known that its up on 8th ave., which would have saved me a lot of trouble.

I've always loved Sure Shot, while there's nothing else on here that sounds like that - that's kind of the point. The energy of the album is all over the place, just blasting through megaphones, over static, overblown drums, guitars, and bass, with horns, organs and any damn thing you can imagine butting in at any damn moment. It's a messy mess, with the words sometimes so blasted that they work mostly as sounds (which is fine) with a meandering second half that doesn't quite live up to the energy of the first (less fine).

In all, it ends up being an assault, just wandering too long, too noisy for too long. One of those cases where a 40 minute version of the same album would have been mindblowing, this is just mindaching. A good one for picking and choosing, but a flawed album experience. 3.5/5

You might like this if: You like Sabotage? That's the only song like it on here, but its a pretty good representative for the tone of the album. It is what it is, shouty, noisy, brash, brassy; act accordingly.