In Brief

* 1/2 Beastie Boys, “Check Your Head,” Capitol. At a time when the Beasties’ white hip-hop aesthetic has never been more pervasive, when it’s all but impossible to turn a corner or flick on the tube without seeing a suburban b-boy or a rapping cartoon dinosaur, the Beastie Boys themselves have come out with an album that sounds as if it were recorded in a single afternoon, with time out for beer. There are moments, mostly in the few sort of post-gogo grooves, but not many of them. Lines like “I’ve got more spice than the Frugal Gourmet” don’t really cut it anymore.

New albums are rated on a scale of one asterisk (poor) to four (excellent).