The Beastie Boys’ highly anticipated new album, “To The 5 Boroughs,” is a return to the classic hip-hop style not heard entirely on a Beastie’s release since 1989’s “Paul’s Boutique.”

Gone are the prog instrumentals, the two-minute thrash anthems, the sabotaged ‘70s-hard rock and the live instruments. Recorded entirely on a computer, “5 Boroughs” is an ode to Gotham and the East Coast hip-hop groups of the early ‘80s.

Anything goes when Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D rhyme in tandem and it often comes off like a freestyle at a rec center. Though they touch on weighty subjects like politics on “Time to Build” (“We got a president we didn’t elect/The Kyoto Treaty he decided to neglect”), there’s inside jokes that range from basketball to food.

The choice samples (EPMD, Big Daddy Kane) evoke the ghosts of hip-hop’s past with choruses cribbed directly from earlier joints. Their punk roots show up via the Dead Boys’ “Sonic Reducer” – they take the song’s main guitar riff for “An Open Letter to NYC.” That song is a highlight, along with Ad-Rock slipping into fake foreign accents and Mike D’s declaration of “you heard me like I was E.F. Hutton.”

On “Three the Hard Way,” MCA disses a perpetrator with “your rhyme technique/ it is antique.” But it could have easily been a boast about his own crew’s flow, as they seem to become even more real with age.

– Ron Berthel, AP Writer
PJ Harvey ‘Uh Huh Her’

Listening to PJ Harvey’s seventh disc is like waiting for a payoff that never quite comes.

Her bluesy, passionate style has been influential for many acts that admire her intensity, so much so that it’s been rendered indistinctive.

Too many of the songs on “Uh Huh Her” seem stuck in neutral. There are half-baked ideas (two clock in at barely more than a minute), and other songs are burdened with repetitive arrangements.

“The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth” and the third cut, with a title we can’t repeat, seem built on riffs rejected from Led Zeppelin. “The Letter” isn’t much better musically, but burns with a sensual energy.

Oddly, the most impressive moment here is buried at the end, following a full-minute recording of seagulls. “The Darker Days of Me and Him” is vaguely Eastern-sounding and haunting.

This may be one of those mid-career malaise albums, where the inspiration level is low and the audience is taking you for granted. Her last disc won the prestigious Mercury Music Prize in 2001, so you can forgive a clunker.

– David Bauder, AP Writer
Cowboy Junkies ‘One Soul Now’

“One Soul Now” is moody, brooding, eerie and melancholy. In other words, it’s everything one would expect from the Cowboy Junkies.

Whether that’s good or bad depends on your expectations.

The 10 tracks on the Junkies’ ninth studio album explore a wide spectrum of the human experience, including love, life, death, loss, fatigue and divorce.

A party album it is not.

If anything, lyricist Michael Timmins seems even more depressed than usual.

There should be no expectation for the Cowboy Junkies to deliver a lighthearted summer disc. They are an experienced band, approaching 20 years together, and they make mature music.

Sedate and mellow, to be sure, but also interesting and engaging. And that’s more than can be said about most of the music hitting stores this summer.

– Scott Bauer, AP Writer
Various Artists ‘The Music Remains The Same’

There have been a whole lotta Led Zeppelin tribute albums over the years; here’s one that’s actually good.

A collection of European metal and hard-rock acts offers up steaming versions of some of the best-known Zeppelin classics that for the most part hew faithfully to the originals, yet offer a fresh take on a familiar riff. Angra’s cover of “Kashmir” is a good example, opening with a nu-metal thrash for the opening riff before settling down into a comfortable groove on the verses. Blaze’s version of “Dazed and Confused” captures for posterity a track that the former Iron Maiden singer’s band does live at most shows, and Elegy offers up an energetic version of the already-spunky “Rock And Roll.”

The best-known act on this disc, German metal diva Doro, waxes Plant-ish on “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” and Consortium Project’s “Immigrant Song” kicks along nicely as well. Some of the foreign accents border on comical, but the effort is intense and the respect genuine. It’s been a long time since the mighty Zep has been covered this well.

– Wayne Parry, AP Writer