Beastie Boys
The Sounds of Science
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Everyone's got a Beastie Boys lyric to call his or her own. When "Hey Ladies" off Paul's Boutique comes on in the car, I chime in with my best nasal Beastie whine, "She's got a gold tooth/ You know she's hardcore/ She'll show you a good time then she'll show you the door."

"Hey Ladies" joins 41 more Beastie Boys delights for the newly released 2-disc anthology, The Sounds of Science. SOS spans almost two decades of Beastie megaplatinum styling and profiling, reaching back to the old school, digging through goofy b-sides and studio tinkerings, and stretching forward to some newly recorded nuggets.

The first song, appropriately titled "Beastie Boys" off 1982's Polly Wog Stew, was recorded when they were Beastie brats raising hell in the Big Apple, and Kate Schellenbach (now of Luscious Jackson) played drums for the band. The tunes that follow mark both musical and spiritual milestones, following MCA (Adam Yauch), Mike D (Mike Diamond), and Adrock (Adam Horovitz) through the creation of their own record label into their Buddhist rebirth and subsequent Tibetan freedom movement, with stops at White Castle for burgers along the way. The Beasties dipped into their five studio albums, a crate of random EPs and singles, and a mess of tracks that threatened never to see the light of day, like the Country Mike sessions. SOS weaves in and out of the rock-or-rap-or-both phases, the Beasties picking up their instruments for hard, fuzzy rock tunes like "Gratitude" off Check Your Head, and picking up their mics for synthetic, electro rap cuts like "Intergalactic" off Hello Nasty.

Hits like the rebellious-rock-spoof "Fight for Your Right" (which helped land Licensed to Ill at #1 on Billboard's charts, making them the first ever rap act to do so) are dotted with rare grooves like the pumping AARP jam "Boomin'Granny," guest appearances from hip-hop peers like Q-Tip, and cuts off a plethora of hard-to-find EPs like Aglio E Olio.

Don't miss Biz Markie doing karaoke of Sir Elton's "Benny and the Jets," and a version of "Jimmy James" with MCA's originally intended but formerly impermissible Jimi Hendrix samples.

The new material on the CD proves that they're still the scientists of sound, mathematically putting it down. On "Alive," the Beasties "shine on the mic like Ultrabrite," employing a similar vocal flow to "Three M\C's and One DJ" off Hello Nasty--which, by the way, is represented on SOS as a live, no-studio-tricks display of Mix Master Mike's awesome turntable talents.

The Boys narrate the musical journey with an 80-page booklet. Yauch, Diamond, and Horovitz tell juicy stories and expose introspective moments alongside full-color photos, building a chronology through each of the songs, all the way up to "Alive."

This look back at the life of a musical group that has been exalted as one of the most gifted and ground-breaking of our time leaves you wondering what's next. The Sounds of Science better not mean that we're about to hear the sounds of silence from our beloved Beasties.

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