Album of the week: Mike D – 'Thank You'

In June 2018, Mike D popped up at an ex-serviceman’s club in Hackney, east London. The onetime Beastie Boy was playing a semi-secret DJ gig at the tiny MOTH venue. He bust out a set of old-school hip hop, and the vibey indie joint was jumping. Well, as much as a joint full of forty- and fifty-something blokes can jump.

“It didn’t seem like the place that would normally have shows like that. How do I describe it?” wondered Diamond when, four months later, in a central London restaurant, I met him and former bandmate Adam Horowitz. “It was like a World War Two veterans club, for 80-year-olds. A time-capsule,” he offered, accurately – MOTH stands for Memorable Order of Tin Hats, which was indeed founded as a veterans’ organisation.

He had gone out on the road to clear his head after completion of the artwork proofing on Beastie Boys Book, the brick-thick memoir and lovingly compiled by childhood friends Diamond and Horowitz, and crafted partly in tribute to third member Adam Yauch, who died in 2012, aged 47, of salivary gland cancer. The London gig, one of a short series of DJ shows, was a low-key victory lap, he explained to me, bobbing in his seat, all angular limbs and ants-in-his-pants jitteriness, “a little summer break without this guy [Horowitz] and without looking over computer screens and photographs”.

The partnership on the book, though, had been a dream, due to both their lifelong friendship and their complementary conditions. “I’m ADD, he’s OCD,” said D, beaming. “It’s a great combination.” Still, there wasn’t much sign of any new music. “After Yauch died, I honestly couldn’t even open ProTools on my computer. I tried! But it was just too sad, even to work on something completely separate musically.”

Now, eight years on from that line-in-the-sand encyclopaedia about the groundbreaking, rules-breaking New York trio, and 14 years since the passing of his friend, Mike D has finally moved on sufficiently to make his first solo album.

Thank You is the sound of the 60-year-young rapper and musician returning to the pre-rap, hardcore punk and No Wave roots of the Beastie Boys, with a topspin of contemporary techno. He’s gone there with the help of his musician sons Davis, 23 and Sklyar, 22, who perform as LA indie/electronic duo Very Nice Person.

Mike D - Thank You (Lyric Video) - YouTube

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Opening track and lead single ‘Switch Up’ is a hammering glitch’n’riff fest, D speed-rapping over a tumble of bleeps and beats. ‘What We Got’ is head-banging sludge-rock, D spitting his echoey bars over proudly basic drums and guitars that are sprinkled with electronic squeals, before the whole thing dissipates into spacey ambience. ‘True Colours’ and ‘That’s Right’ keep up the intense pace, and the buzzsaw synths/breakbeat template, and it feels like forever before ‘I Don’t Care’ brings some relief and contrast. It sounds like the title line is an interpolation of a lyric from ‘I Love It’, the 2012 stadium-pop Icona Pop song co-written by Charli XCC. It isn’t credited as such but either way, it’s a blessed moment of space and melody, as is ‘Back to Start’, a blast of lo-fi bedroom indie.

Then it’s back to all things hectic. ‘Make It Stop’ sounds like Salt-N-Pepa’s ‘Push It’ with added agitation. ‘Crypto’ has a buzzing, dentist-drill beat. All of which, over the course of the album, is intense, in-your-face and just a bit exhausting, as if Mike D has made rock’n’rap flesh of his ADD. You might find yourself yearning for a bit of the spacing and pacing that Kim Gordon magicked on her solo albums, which plough similar genre furrows.

The closing title track, though, is lovely. “We were just kids, figuring it out, working it out,” he sings, delicately, repeatedly, over spangles of shimmering guitar. It’s a note of exhalation and gratitude to the creative playground of New York that Patti Smith also hymned in her memoir Just Kids – and also to his late friend and bandmate. If it’s taken Mike D 14 years to process the loss of Adam Yauch, for this track alone, it’s been worth the wait.