A Pagliacci in Pumas, erstwhile Beastie Boy Michael Diamond is hurting inside and ready to vent his truth. But how do you drop your “Sounds of Silence” when your medium is “The Sounds of Science,” 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 and worst music to ever exist?

Well, as a wise man once said, “Be true to yourself and you will never fall.” You can’t say 60-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Mike D 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 since the death of Adam “MCA” Yauch 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. “I need a Plan B, retired MC,” Mike D proudly exclaims on “What We Got.”

He’s still an eminent party starter even if his writing is leaning closer to Siouxsie Sioux than Schoolly D. “Make It Stop” is relentlessly upbeat despite lyrics like, “We all go for trauma/We fill our worlds with drama” and “Why’s it always stay the same/Why do I always feel the pain?” Gone are the the bugged-out cratedigger references and Spoonie Gee shoutouts that made Mike the essential element to the Beasties’ cool cred, but his voice still has that familiar everydude charm. He’s not trying to out-rap JID or anything, and he’s still delirious fun when he’s 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’s the problem with that?

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, Matt & Kim, Portugal. The Man, AWOLNATION, and Warpaint—which is to say off-kilter, tastefully blown-out, percussively busy but ultimately not especially memorable. It’s got the freewheeling energy of the lightly funky po-mo boho pastiches he made remixing Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Moby, and Cibo Matto in the ’90s (not to mention the Beasties’ original 1983 breakout prank “Cooky Puss”) but there’s no real hooks to anchor anything. Mike has turned into what can be best described as a “confessional toaster,” getting the crowd hyped with introspection and reflection instead of braggadocio. Ruminative lyrics like “Got secrets but I’m happy/Might cry, might laugh” (“Secrets, Pt. 1”) or “Where you goin?/Where you been?/The mess I’m in” (“Back to Start”) could serve as an amazing juxtaposition if the beats just, you know, knocked. I mean, what would Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” be if you couldn’t actually dance to it?

Instead, the music on Thank You vacillates from reheated breakbeats (“Switch Up”), itchy indie-pop (“Here We Are”), past-sell-date digital hardcore (“Secrets, Pt. 1”) and songs that remind you that electroclash artists like Peaches and Fannypack were liberally biting from the Beasties playbook the whole time (“Make It Stop”). “I Don’t Care” quasi-borrows the Icona Pop and Charli xcx flip-off, rotates a few eighth notes, and turns it into something that sounds like a reflective Mellow Gold-era Beck B-side. “Crypto” is a classic protest song against greed and the eponymous currency (“Up in the morning, ready to capitalize/Some fool selling, and you’re ready to buy”), but the Sleigh Bells-lite throb makes you wonder if Mike wouldn’t have been better off just starting a hardcore band, like he did back in 1981 when his art-punk crew Young Aborigines rebranded as the bad brothers you know so well.

Thank You does have its moments of inspiration and will probably kill in a live setting. Single “True Colors” has a Stone Roses lilt that features Mike as a pretty solid indie balladeer; “That’s Right” explodes with some pretty gnarly feedback squeals; “It’s Time” is a percussive marvel that refuses to sit still. In fact, the whole thing benefits from Mike being a pretty restless rhythmist—after all, this is the man who turned the heavily syncopated, fidgety, stuttering drum beat to “Sabotage” into a global hit. After decades of being the illest motherfucker from here to Gardena, Mike D has earned his right to be contemplative, wounded, and sincere, rhyming, “On the phone getcha, getcha full connection/It’s not always there, need some introspection” like he’s Kool Emo Dee. However he boasted in 1994 that “Everything I do is funky like Lee Dorsey” and unfortunately Thank You fails to deliver on that particular promise.