By virtue of surviving for so long, the Beastie Boys are doomed to perennially attract the hoariest of reviewer crutches: The trip down memory lane. My Beasties remembrances aren't as libelous as some; consisting mainly of a long, sweaty, suburban bike ride to find a record store that would sell me Ill Communication without a parent or guardian present. Boy, the old critical rubric sure was simpler back then, where the Beastie Boys stood apart from all that rap music I was dismissive/scared of for two simple reasons: 1) They used to be a punk band!, and 2) They play their own instruments! Those criteria come back to play half a life later with the Beastie Boys' new record, The Mix-Up, their first all-instrumental non-compilation full-length.
Yet here is The Mix-Up anyway, with the Boys mic-less, back behind their chosen instruments (Horovitz-- guitar, Yauch-- bass, Diamond-- drums) and swollen to a five-piece with longtime keyboardist Money Mark and percussionist Alfredo Ortiz. The record runs the gamut of the Beasties' instrumental tastes, all the way from dub to funk to dubby funk and funky dub. While less content with Blaxploitation recreation than they used to be, most of The Mix-Up still sounds more like soundtracks for imaginary 70s B-flicks (names like "The Melee" and "Electric Worm" don't hurt) than the post-punk touchpoint laundry list Mike D offered in advance interviews-- nobody's gonna mistake this record for !!!.
It's every instrumental rock record's responsibility to come off as more than just a collection of studio jam sessions, and that's where The Mix-Up ultimately fails. Beastie Boys lore is that they warm up for each record by improvising like-so, but the 12 songs here don't suggest that the results of those exercises are worth more than raw sampling material. Despite lively additions of percussive texture (the whistle on "The Rat Cage", the vibes on "14th St. Break") and some peppy organ from Money Mark, the Beasties prove little more than their tightness as a band, cred points that would've been valuable 10 to 15 years ago, but are severely deflated after a million praises of the Roots' instrumental chops.
True, there are few overtly embarrassing moments here, though the fake-sitar of "Dramastically Different" comes close. And very occasionally, the band hits upon something new (for them), like the refreshingly bold (if a wee bit jambandy) guitar riffs that slice through the noodle-funk plod of "Off the Grid" and "The Rat Cage". But the spic-span production keeps the occasional nugget from proving itself as a potential grade-A break, with no obvious loops jumping out of the speakers like the itchy thud of "So Whatcha Want" or the fuzz-punk of "Gratitude."
More worrisome than anything, there's a distinct lack of fun in the instrumental wankage of The Mix-Up, a bad sign for a band that has seen their results fade in direct proportion to how seriously they take themselves. The soundtrack homage pieces collected on The In Sound From Way Out! may have been the musical equivalent of the goofy costumes donned for the "Sabotage" video, but the Beasties' reverence for references was infectious, as songs like "Son of Neckbone" worked like no-words versions of their manic name-dropping rhymes. In an environment where a rap group that plays instruments is no longer the novelty it was fifteen years ago, the Beastie Boys could've used a bit of that personality, rather than trying too hard to prove their chops in chin-stroking, and ultimately forgettable, fashion.
