27/08/2026
Album of the Week: Mike D - Thank You
Mike Diamond’s incredible Thank You is, remarkably, his first full-length solo album, and the first album of new music from a Beastie Boy since 2011. You might think he’d be feeling some kind of creative pressure after such a long hiatus, but the album instead has the confident air of being made by someone who has nothing to prove. Which, as a member of one of the most iconic hip-hop groups of all time (not to mention one of the best hardcore bands, when they felt like it), is fair enough.
And this is good news for us. Developed from a series of relaxed, exploratory sessions in Diamond’s home studio, Thank You is not only crammed with post-genre invention and low-key hooks, it is also defiantly lo-fi, evincing the sense of first-take-best-take in the way that the best Beastie Boys work did. Among the many highlights, the opening ‘Switch Up’, which marries an old-school jungle breakbeat, krautrock bass, guttural industrial sub blasts and a pleasingly freeform, blown out vocal; ‘What We Got’, which mixes No-Age-like art-punk with Check Your Head-era Beasties minimalism; and the fantastic ‘True Colors’, which appears to be the answer to the question, ‘What if Silver Apples and John Barry teamed up to write the theme tune to a 1960s TV show set in a beatnik monastery?’ (Released: 28/08/26)
If you like: Beastie Boys, Luscious Jackson, Body/Head
