Alt-Rock
311
Uplifter
(Sony)
*1/2
Is someone in 311 sleeping with a Sony record exec? They’ve been allowed to put out one awful album after another four years, and Uplifter continues their trend of unremarkable noise. Hyped as 311’s hardest album yet, Uplifter takes a dash of rock-radio “hard” guitar, infuses it with a bit of what I think is supposed to be reggae, and mixes it all up into an unlistenable 46 minutes and 54 seconds that I’ll never get back. What makes this album so notably terrible, though, isn’t the music but the lyrics, which I’m embarrassed just listening to — I can’t imagine actually singing them. On “Something Out of Nothing,” wordsmith Nick Hexum sings, “I’ve one conclusion/It’s not illusion/But it’s creativity/The supernatural thing that happens between you and me, yeah.” Yeah. Perhaps it’s best to look at this Bob Rock-produced failure as a motivational album. It lets all those terrible young bands out there know there’s no reason to let lack of talent, originality, inspiration, or honesty stand in the way of their dreams.
CURTIS WRIGHT
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