Beastie Boys' new album will be Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 (but will actually be Hot Sauce Committee Part 1)

Providing a Tolkien-like mess of fragmentary chronology for future scholars to someday untangle, the Beastie Boys have announced that their new album due next spring will be titled Hot Sauce Committee Part 2, but will contain material previously recorded for what was originally intended to be Hot Sauce Committee Part 1. Via confusing press release today, the group announced that after “an exhaustive re-sequence marathon,” it discovered that, in the words of Adam “MCA” Yauch, “the final sequence for Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 works best with all its songs replaced by the 16 tracks we originally had lined up in pretty much the same order we had them in for Hot Sauce Committee Part 1.”

So… Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 is actually Hot Sauce Committee Part 1, and Hot Sauce Committee Part 1 (which may not see release at all) is now Hot Sauce Committee Part 2. Or perhaps there never really was a Hot Sauce Committee Part 2, and all of this is a clever ruse to make us believe that the preceding storyline—presumably suggested by the in media res narrative thread of Hot Sauce Committee Part 1—existed when it didn’t, which will likely prove disappointing to those trying to tease out the subtext of songs like “Funky Donkey” and “Lee Majors Come Again.” Or maybe it’s just a gag to get you to pay attention to the fact that the Beastie Boys have a new album coming out.