311: Transistor (Capricorn)
In a recent interview, 311 frontman Nick Hexum was quoted as saying, “We’ve paid the bills, now it’s time to be artists.” After a breakthrough smash hit (Down) and a wildly successful album, 311 exploded into the music scene in 1995. Their skyrocket rise to fame can be chalked up to their natural sound that fuses riffing rock and speedy rapping with the occasional reggae song. But just as Sir Isaac Newton said, “What goes up, must come down.”
With Transistor, their fourth album, 311 attempts to be artistic by going into the studio and toying with many different sounds. During the course of the album, 311 plays around with turntables, switchboards and different outer space effects. In trying to bring their music to the next level, Transistor takes a step back. You might get the impression that 311 made better music when they weren’t trying to be “artists.” On their three previous albums and 1994’s Music, especially, 311 simply let their rhythm flow. So instead of going back to their roots, the band tries to climb the tree of versatility and almost falls off a branch.
Some songs sound as if 311 is trying too hard; other songs, not enough. What worked in the past for the group is partially forgotten, and some songs feel forced. Drowsy tracks like Inner Light Spectrum and Use of Time would work better as lullabies than as reggae songs. You might find yourself hitting the fast-forward button to get to much better songs like the trippy What Was I Thinking or the roller-coaster groove of The Continuous Life. Which goes to show you, Transistor is pretty much hit and miss. (Thank God for the CD player!)
Transistor works well when 311 does what it does best, which is flat-out jam. The title track Transistor is trademark 311 and is already climbing the alternative charts. I recommend skipping to catchy tracks like the all-too-short Tune In, the powerful Borders and the album’s best song Galaxy. Experimental songs like Light Years and Color backfire as they drag endlessly. In fact, the album would have been a lot more enjoyable if they cut the length in half.
To try to make up for not releasing an album in ’96 (they had released an album every year since ’93), 311 made Transistor extra long, delivering 21 songs over the course of 73 long minutes. This ambitious move is respectable, but few will have the patience to make it through the whole thing in one sitting. In this case, more turns out to be less.
It’s obvious the band worked very hard on Transistor, and it seems sincere, but Transistor will probably only be appreciated by hard-core 311 fans and shunned by others who might liken it to the title of the 311 song, Beautiful Disaster. I hope with the next album, 311 won’t forget what made them famous in the first place.
