“Beautiful Disaster” (from Transistor, 1997)ĭespite the maddening attempts to sift through 311’s catalog seeking the most straightforward and streamlined exceptions to their almost prog-like insistence on multi-part structures and odd shifts from one part to another, not to mention ill-fitting raps, they are ultimately a complicated band. It’s even got a double-time bridge that fits like a glove.ġ. “Don’t Stay Home” sounds like nothing else in their catalog and you can even hum it or interpret it for piano.

It’s completely continuous throughout the song without resorting to one of the random switch-ups that make so many other 311 jams such a bummer after a tasty lick or pleasurable harmony grabs you momentarily. But it’s rare enough that it gets the edge for something we can’t take for granted: one honest-to-god legible melody, which is even quite pretty, that never lapses. It’s hard to say whether “Don’t Stay Home” or “All Mixed Up” is the better tune, and “Don’t Stay Home” for sure has a clumsier, lumpier groove with the chugging distortion of guitars that never let up. A more than respectable nominee for their all-time contribution to history. In fact, few 311 songs sustain a groove like this. There’s about five different choruses in the thing, which isn’t that different from other 311 songs, except all of these fit seamlessly and do continue to top one another, with Hexum and Martinez piling onto the song’s signature scratch-funk riff delicately while toasting around it dexterously, like a good boxer, without overpowering the groove. It’s even got a jazzy- Aerosmith guitar solo in the middle that doesn’t sound out of place.įollowing the catchy breakthrough hit “Down,” it was “All Mixed Up” that truly gave 311 a charting pop song to be proud of. If that sounds like a juxtaposition that won’t work very well, you’re not wrong, but perhaps due to law of averages, Transistor contains a handful of the band’s absolute best songs ever nonetheless, and should you peruse all 21 tracks 20 years later, the perfectly enjoyable and sticky “Running” is the hidden gem among the pile of ideas and riffs that never truly made it to the finish line. At 21 tracks, these wildly eclectic purveyors of mildly metallic funk were finally permitted to run wild with their expansive record collections, which must be loaded with Lee “Scratch” Perry and King Tubby because they’re easily the most dub-obsessed hard rock band since Bad Brains (whose “Leaving Babylon” they’d go on to cover in 1999). Transistor is simultaneously 311’s most tantalizing prospect and their most disappointing slog.

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