Mike DMain stage, Beyond the Pale★★★★☆There’s no sleep ’til Wicklow for the former Beastie Boy Mike D, who arrives at the Beyond the Pale festival, in Glendalough, 14 years after the raucous rap-rock trio came to an end with the death of Adam Yauch, aka Mike D’s partner in rhyme, MCA.Mike D and the third Beastie Boy, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, have vowed never to perform as the Beastie Boys without Yauch, although Mike D (real name Michael Diamond) does acknowledge his band’s legacy by kicking off this enjoyably frantic 60-minute set in a crammed Selective Memory tent on Sunday with Hello Brooklyn, from Paul’s Boutique, the Beasties’ seminal 1989 LP.You can only admire Mike D’s chutzpah. Nineteen years since the Beastie Boys last played Ireland, he’s back on the road promoting a forthcoming solo album on which he takes to the mic on his own – a big switch-up from the Beasties, which was all about the interplay between the three rappers and their boisterous chemistry.He isn’t flying entirely solo. He has brought along a band, 5D, which includes his two sons and which conjures a guttural groove as the 60-year-old frontman throws himself around the stage like your dad cutting loose when the wedding DJ plays Nirvana. Beyond the Pale: Mike D in the crammed Selective Memory tent on Sunday. Photograph: Alan Betson Mike D brings a note of mayhem to a laid-back afternoon in Glendalough. Earlier on the 75-year-old Jamaican reggae great Horace Andy delivers a balmy set, having flown straight from Portugal, where he was on stage with Massive Attack until 2am. He is followed by the effervescent Galway indie group NewDad, who light up the evening with a blitzing cover of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Heads Will Roll.Back at the Selective Memory tent, Mike D’s Glendalough performance is part of a soft launch for that forthcoming solo album, Thank You. Judging by the material debuted here, the record will bring an autumnal spin to the Beastie Boys’ kick-the-door-down hip-hop. He seems to have created, by accident, a new genre of mildly unhinged middle-aged synth rap, pogoing like a lunatic over a drum’n’bass breakdown on the single Switch Up and rhyming over blitzing synths on Crypto.There is banter to go with the beats. One song is introduced jokingly – one assumes it’s a joke – with a sample of RTÉ Radio 1’s old “Jooooe Duffy” Liveline ident. Beyond the Pale: Mike D in the crammed Selective Memory tent on Sunday. Photograph: Alan Betson Later he brings up a big sporting event over the weekend at which Taylor Swift was spotted in the crowd. No, not Louth v Armagh but one of the games in the NBA Finals, as ultimately won by the New York Knicks. A request for someone in the audience to throw him a Knicks jersey is partially successful when a baseball hat is chucked on to the stage. [ From the archive: Beastie Boys – ‘We were the first wave of crazy’Opens in new window ]But along with the joking there is seriousness, such as on the track Thank You, where he and his band look back wistfully at Mike D’s years as a young man trying to make it in the music business. “We were just kids... trying it out,” Mike D croons.His singing voice is tender and vulnerable – the very opposite of his rapping style – while the acoustic soundscape conjured by his group has a teary intensity. What’s that noise? It’s the Weepy Boys.