Review Summary: Sigh – here we go again.
Two years after the release of “Uplifter” we are presented with “Universal Pulse”, the 11th studio album from Nebraskan genre-blenders 311. Even after that disappointing release hopes remained moderately high that 311 could yet strike a new creative spark and rekindle their musical prowess. Then they released the single “Sunset in July”. Sigh – here we go again.
Right from the start you can tell something is going to be seriously amiss with this record just by the way the album art looks. In an ill fated attempt to defibrillate the band’s now defunct psychedelic elements, Universal Pulse features a mess of colors, shapes, wildlife and geographic locations on its cover. Seriously, the thing looks as if it was put together in an hour and a half by someone who knows as much about Photoshop as your average internet meme creator. This is a minor point but the cover is truly indicative of the content as the music comes off as equally as lazy and ill conceived as the visual element.
The first and most obvious problem here is the instrumentation. Just as was the case with Uplifter it’s as if 311 wrote and recorded all eight of these songs (yes, eight) in the same sitting and failed to realize that they all sounded the same as each other or past efforts. Experimentation and creativity have been utterly eradicated and replaced with paint-by-numbers riffs and rehashed pop-rock choruses. Right from the get, “Time Bomb” leads the album off with a mind numbing snare and guitar collaboration that continues on until we reach the first of many forgettable sing-along choruses. The rest of the song rehashes the same palm muted chord structure before ending with your standard bridge and chorus outro. Nearly every song on the album follows this structure unwaveringly. “Rock On” starts off in a moderately interesting way as a driving octaver riff gets the song going but it quickly becomes tiresome as it is never expanded upon. The song is then punctuated by a lifeless cut-and-paste guitar solo section before coming to an abrupt, unsatisfying halt.
As for each of the musician’s performances, things couldn’t possibly be more restrained. Nowhere to be found are the funky breakdowns of Grassroots, the psychedelic reggae grooves of Transistor or the hard rock freak outs of the Blue album. Chad Sexton, while he has clearly displayed his sticking chops over the bands extended career, is inexplicably lifeless on this album. The percussion here is so dull and uninspired that I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Chad had lost both an arm and leg and thus recorded his parts using only his remaining two limbs. Tim Mahoney is equally as lethargic in his playing as every riff here is analogous with the last, featuring little more than trite palm-muted rhythms, cookie-cutter reggae licks and soulless solos. P-Nut, the bassist who’s slap work and funky bass lines have given the band’s earlier masterpieces much of their character, probably puts forth the most solid and tasteful performance of the bunch. Though his skill bubbles up through the muck from time to time (namely on the closer “And a Ways to Go”) it undoubtedly leaves the avid 311 fan yearning for the glory days.
On the vocal side of things, we find this album is plagued with the same problems every album since Transistor has had; the song writing is absolutely cringe worthy. The band has simply become incredibly cheesy or downright laughable with their lyrical content. It seems every song Nick writes these days has to be about summer time, the sun or how enjoyable friendship can be. I had to rewind tracks like “Count Me In” and “Weightless” to ensure I heard them correctly. Here is the chorus from each track:
Count Me In:
“Count me in. I've made a decision, count me in. If you’re in, I'm in. I know what you’re thinking you know I'm with you, count me in. If you do, I do.”
Weightless:
“Weightless, weightless, ah weightless, weightless, we’re all weightless, weightless. Every one of us is weightless.”
I’m not kidding, those are really the lyrics. The other songs don’t fare much better in the vocal department either (some might arguably be worse). SA can be heard performing some admirable vocal harmonies and there is at least a modest attempt at resurrecting the rap-rock vibe of old on tracks like “Wild Nights”. Overall, however, the songs are just so artistically bankrupt and reliant on regurgitated material that there is little that can be done to save them.
None of this should come as much of a surprise, though. Uplifter marked the beginning of the end and Universal Pulse further shows that the band is not interested in deviating from this path into musical irrelevancy. As it is now, 311 lay as a mere shell of their former selves; entirely devoid of any soul or artistic passion. The one redeeming quality here is that at an anemic running time of 30 minutes, Universal Pulse isn’t likely to waste much of your life.
-Dave
