{"id":752319,"date":"2026-08-28T09:08:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T09:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/752319\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T09:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T09:08:11","slug":"mike-d-thank-you-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/752319\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike D: Thank You Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Pagliacci in Pumas, erstwhile Beastie Boy Michael Diamond is hurting inside and ready to vent his truth. But how do you drop your \u201cSounds of Silence<\/a>\u201d when your medium is \u201cThe Sounds of Science<\/a>,\u201d a 47-year legacy of puckish punk-rap, ill communication, and party-rock anthems, a life lived as a beacon of inspiration to some of the best<\/a> and worst<\/a> music to ever exist?<\/p>\n

Well, as a wise man once said<\/a>, \u201cBe true to yourself and you will never fall.\u201d You can\u2019t say 60-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Mike D<\/a> is faking the funk on Thank You, his first solo record since the cheeky 2000 obscurity Country Mike’s Greatest Hits and the first new music from a Beastie Boy<\/a> since the death of Adam \u201cMCA\u201d Yauch<\/a> ended the group in 2012. A noisy, frenetic, glitch-rap-electro-punk blow-out, Thank You is certainly not some aging outlaw clinging to his former glory. \u201cI need a Plan B, retired MC,\u201d Mike D proudly exclaims on \u201cWhat We Got.\u201d<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s still an eminent party starter even if his writing is leaning closer to Siouxsie Sioux than Schoolly D. \u201cMake It Stop\u201d is relentlessly upbeat despite lyrics like, \u201cWe all go for trauma\/We fill our worlds with drama\u201d and \u201cWhy\u2019s it always stay the same\/Why do I always feel the pain?\u201d Gone are the the bugged-out cratedigger references and Spoonie Gee shoutouts that made Mike the essential element to the Beasties\u2019 cool cred, but his voice still has that familiar everydude charm. He\u2019s not trying to out-rap JID<\/a> or anything, and he\u2019s still delirious fun when he\u2019s just doing funky gibberish. Honestly, Thank You just sounds like Mike D.A.D. wanted to get together and make some racket with his two adult children, Skyler and Davis Diamond. What\u2019s the problem with that?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, very little on this project coheres in any meaningful or crazy sniffable way. Thank You continues in the vein of the 2010s remixes Mike D did for artists like Uffie<\/a>, Matt & Kim<\/a>, Portugal. The Man<\/a>, AWOLNATION, and Warpaint<\/a>\u2014which is to say off-kilter, tastefully blown-out, percussively busy but ultimately not especially memorable. It\u2019s got the freewheeling energy of the lightly funky po-mo boho pastiches he made remixing Jon Spencer Blues Explosion<\/a>, Moby<\/a>, and Cibo Matto<\/a> in the \u201990s (not to mention the Beasties\u2019 original 1983 breakout prank \u201cCooky Puss\u201d) but there\u2019s no real hooks to anchor anything. Mike has turned into what can be best described as a \u201cconfessional toaster,\u201d getting the crowd hyped with introspection and reflection instead of braggadocio. Ruminative lyrics like \u201cGot secrets but I\u2019m happy\/Might cry, might laugh\u201d (\u201cSecrets, Pt. 1\u201d) or \u201cWhere you goin?\/Where you been?\/The mess I\u2019m in\u201d (\u201cBack to Start\u201d) could serve as an amazing juxtaposition if the beats just, you know, knocked. I mean, what would Robyn<\/a>\u2019s \u201cDancing on My Own\u201d be if you couldn\u2019t actually dance to it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Pagliacci in Pumas, erstwhile Beastie Boy Michael Diamond is hurting inside and ready to vent his truth.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":752320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[375,96,128,56,54,55,307],"class_list":["post-752319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}