Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsThe 311 stuff is great, but the other stuff... some great highs and their ABSOLUTE LOWEST LOWS.
ByJP Prateron July 11, 2017
The things written by 311 and produced by Scotch are amazing. One And The Same rocks harder than some of the stuff on Soundsystem, as does Too Late and the end of Wild Fire. It is also worth noting that this album has the most inventive and immersive production value since Transistor, especially in the drum department. They really did put a lot of thought and work into how they can make each song sound a bit different from the others, especially in the drum department. There seems to be multiple drum room and drum microphone configurations used throughout the songs, some of the songs don't even feature rim shots, a Chad Sexton staple.
Then there's the decent but not great stuff, like Extension and Forever Now, Days of 88, in fact most of the album fits in this category...
Then there's the pop garbage. Til The City's On Fire SUCKS. It's terrible, it's almost like it should feature Katy Perry or someone in that arena. Perfect Mistake has a cool rap from Nick (this is our realest state/ you're on our real estate is a cool rhyme) but it's kinda something we've already heard (the breakdown riff is pretty much stolen from the heavy part of Thank Your Lucky Starts off of their 2005 album Don't Tread On Me).
People who want to deny the fact that the band kind of panders to the pop charts on this album will say something about musical growth and how it's just a natural progression or whatever, and that would be fine if you heard their core sound in the pop material... but on this album, you don't. The more poppy stuff, which was allegedly written after the rest of the album (produced by Feldman from Goldfinger) is not a product of a band growing and changing naturally as musicians. It is a failed attempt to pander to a new audience, and it honestly just sounds desperate. Places That The Mind Goes even blatantly rips off of Im Yours by Jason Mraz in the middle.
A lot of the songs are written in a very similar manner, some of them have forced heavy endings that sound uninspired, like they are just trying to make the songs longer. Also a lot of the songs feature extremely similar build ups between verse and chorus, little eight measure breakdowns that kind of all start to sound tedious after a while.
And as a diehard 311 fan, I can't help but wonder how much better the so-so parts of the album could have been with more input from Chad Sexton, who usually composes around half of the music on any given 311 album. Seriously, he wrote ONE song. They used ONE of his demos. There's no proof anywhere that he wrote more music that maybe didn't make the album, but I find it hard to believe that he didn't have more ideas that were presented to the band and rejected in favor of some radio bull snot.
So while I do think this album contains some of the best material theyve released in a long time, I don't really understand why they would release songs with digital drums and COMPLETELY abandon their core sound for a couple of songs on the album but literally spend every interview leading up to this album talking about how it is a love letter to the diehard long time fans.
The great: Too Late, Face In The Wind, One And The Same, Hey Yo
The good: everything not mentioned above or below
The bad: Places That The Mind Goes, Til The City's On Fire (worst 311 song of all time), Inside Our Home, On A Roll
Even if there were songs that I may not have loved on their previous efforts, I could understand why they would release it and/or what they were trying to say with it. On this album, I can't understand why some of these decisions were made. One of the reasons we love 311 so much is that they survive without radio, even when they were popular they were still always an underdog, but some of this album sounds like a very very desperate attempt to get a hit. This may be where I stop buying their albums the day they come out and listening to them religiously before I form my opinion. I hate to say this but they might be done for.
