Cars - Metropolitan Pulsations

The Cars represented the missing link between the post-punk generation and the electronic pop-rock that would dominate the Eighties. Neurotic rhythms, exuberant keyboards, instantly addictive choruses, guitars pumped up to the edge of hard rock, and the awkward, nasal vocals of frontman Ric Ocasek all mark out their immaculately crafted "postmodern" pop songs. Theirs is a unique way of reading pop music: syncopated keyboard figures in tandem with bonsai-sized guitar heroics, combined with a disconcerting knack for churning out irresistible hooks, add up to a format that's practically without equal. Ultimately, it's an update of the Fifties pop-rock songbook, spiked with glam temptations, disco rhythms and new wave allusions. A smart songbook, at times almost cartoonish, but always carrying a dramatic aura beneath its fragile shoulders.

The Cars are first and foremost the creation of singer and guitarist Ric Ocasek, a lanky, awkward figure built like a cartoon character, an intellectual well versed in disposable culture, a postmodern artist who never rejects the avant-garde but always prefers the charts: every Cars album went at least platinum, for a total of around 30 million copies sold.

Among Ocasek's other triumphs - a brilliant prototype of the "successful anti-rockstar" - was winning the affections of the stunning model/actress Paulina Porizkova, whom he met on the set of the "Drive" video, as well as a commendable career as a producer and talent scout, working with artists such as Nick Cave, Suicide, Bad Brains, No Doubt, Guided By Voices, Weezer, Hole, Bad Religion, Jonathan Richman and many others.

The band formed in Boston in 1976 and, besides Ocasek, featured Benjamin Orr on bass, Elliott Easton on guitar, Greg Hawkes on keyboards and David Robinson (ex-Modern Lovers) on drums. All had put in a solid apprenticeship: Ocasek and Orr in particular, old friends, had already played together in the folk trio Milkwood (with Hawkes on keyboards) and in the more popular Cap'n Swing (with Easton on guitar).

In 1977 the five took the decisive step: they sent a demo of one of their songs, "Just What I Needed", to the influential Boston radio station WBCN, and within a short time the track became the most requested on its playlists. A little extra buzz earned in the city's clubs was enough to convince Elektra (the label of untouchable legends like Doors, Stooges and Television) to sign them.

In those years the punk wave was rising, and New York's rock scene was dominated by bands like Blondie and Talking Heads. The Cars represented the most mature and intellectual wing of that generation, drawing on the same proto-punk sound but skilfully blending it with delicate pop melodies. Propelled by local FM radio, the music of Ocasek and company began to break into the charts, helped along by witty lyrics that often dwelt on the classic pairing of "girls and cars".

Under the direction of English producer Roy Thomas Baker, known for his work with early Queen, the band's debut album The Cars (1978) was born, recorded in just 12 days yet already able to nail down every defining trait of their sound: punchy, repetitive rhythms, tight guitars, miniature solos, carpets of keyboards, irresistible hooks, simple and compact choruses. The aesthetic isn't far from the glam of Roxy Music, but the mood - cold and neurotic - brushes up against the frozen pantomimes of Suicide, with an approach no less avant-garde, even if tuned to pop frequencies.

The opening "Good Times Roll" is the perfect gateway into the world of The Cars: an asphalt jungle where alienated, mildly unhinged characters flounder, lost in impossible love affairs and blinded by their own illusions. A mechanical, frantic metropolis that swallows individuals up in its tentacles - and here the new wave inheritance is plain to see. But unlike most of that movement, The Cars exorcise their futuristic nightmares with the weapon best suited to them: irony. A sharp sense of humor, though less demented than that of contemporaries Devo, which pairs perfectly with their other stroke of genius: reviving the naive instinctiveness of Fifties rock'n'roll (the catchy tunes, the innocent melodies, the little backing choruses), which further helps disguise just how serious the themes really are. So in "Good Times Roll" the misleading title and breezy rock'n'roll gait conceal the bitterness of a venomous lyric (“Let the good times roll/ Let them knock you around/ Let the good times roll/ Let them make you a clown”), where disillusionment takes refuge in sarcasm (“If the illusion is real/ Let them give you a ride/ If they got thunder appeal/ Let them be on your side”), while the Buddy Holly homage of "My Best Friend's Girl" - almost an eternal summer jukebox sing-along - dilutes romantic disappointment into handclaps and carefree Fifties-style choruses.

Ocasek's dry, neurotic voice suits these frantic choruses perfectly, but whenever a serenade is called for - rock or otherwise - the microphone gets handed to the band's resident heartthrob, blond Benjamin Orr, the perfect crooner for an anthology piece like "Just What I Needed", which starts off tense on the electric guitar's metallic strings, slowly takes off propelled by the drumming, and soars majestically into Hawkes's immortal synth riff and the chorus sung in unison. Easton's guitar is the backbone of these compositions, and although it leans much closer to AOR than to punk, it always stays perfectly measured, never overplaying its hand. "Don't Cha Stop" may not be the collection's peak, but it's remarkable precisely for fusing such distant attitudes: it's the most punk track here, yet it closes with a solo almost worthy of Styx. And it's that same hard rock guitar work that brands the romantic torments of "You're All I've Got Tonight", sent soaring by yet another radiant melodic opening.

The wave influences are submerged and distorted: "I'm in Touch with Your World" is born out of Talking Heads-style spasms before opening up into a colorful whirl of synths and cartoonish effects; the mature synth-pop sound is still a way off, but the fleeting keyboard solos of "Bye Bye Love" already hint at the band's full potential in that direction. Standing apart entirely is the extraordinary "Moving in Stereo", built entirely around experiments with the stereo spectrum, the sound drifting back and forth between the speakers, with a mutant bass and icy synths dictating mechanical cadences in a thriller-like atmosphere where the guitars cut like blades in the dark. The track - one of the album's masterpieces, and one of Ocasek's finest moments as a singer - then dissolves into the closing "All Mixed Up", steeped in fresh electronic moods: this time it's Orr taking the lead vocal, and above all keyboardist Hawkes, who also delivers a blistering sax solo.

In that hotbed of ideas and masterpieces that was the late Seventies, The Cars reveals the full personality of a band capable of charting a new "American" path through new wave, combining FM-radio pop appeal with punk hysteria, danceability with rock adrenaline. And showing a sharpness in songwriting and a sophistication in production rarely matched even by the most celebrated wave records of the era.

It's a dazzling debut, one that earns the band the title of Rolling Stone's revelation of the year. "We should have called it The Cars Greatest Hits," Ocasek and co. would later joke: The Cars would spend 139 weeks on the charts, becoming one of the best-selling debut albums of the Seventies.

Encouraged by their success, The Cars attempted a follow-up a year later with Candy-O (1979), whose "O", according to Ocasek, stands for "obnoxious". It's another dive into a cars & girls imagery evoked right from the cover, an Alberto Vargas illustration of a voluptuous pin-up stretched out on a car hood: by sheer coincidence (?), the girl is actually named Candy (Moore), the model drummer Robinson was dating at the time.

Ocasek tells tales of nighttime, teenage love affairs, like the one in the single "Let's Go", with its restless teenager ("she's a frozen fire/ she's my one desire") and the eager would-be boyfriend desperate to take her out ("I like the nightlife, baby"). Another pop'n'roll vignette, punctuated by a series of handclaps followed by the invocation-scream ("Let's go!"), but also another chapter in Ocasek's own American Graffiti, revisiting the 1962 instrumental of the same name by The Routers. But the night can also be devious and murky: take "Candy-O", a mechanical, disorienting electro-rock ride, with Orr turning dangerously dark as he calls out to another longed-for girl (“Candy-O, I need you/ Sunday dress, ruby ring/ Candy-O, I need you so/ Could you help me in?”… "Edge of night, distract yourself/ Obstacles don't work"). Two and a half minutes among the darkest in the entire Cars catalogue, with the bass pulsing menacingly and the guitar's hysterical hiccups setting up an atmosphere of looming drama. A dark attitude that doesn't let up in "Night Spots", driven by the obsessive interplay of keyboard and guitars, with vocals more acidic and jarring than ever. And the brief interlude "Shoo Be Doo" strays directly into Suicide territory: an icy electronic piece recited by Ocasek in the very same hallucinated style as Alan Vega, who would later become his friend and production client.

These are episodes that show the band's desire to leave behind the easy harbor of their debut sound to attempt bold new experiments, a path Ocasek would later pursue as a solo artist and champion of underground acts. But the album also confirms the Cars' skill at carving out simple, high-impact pop-rock miniatures, like "Since I Held You," with its sprightly chorus and bouncy, march-like gait; "Lust For Kicks," a sardonic portrait of a couple ("He's got his plastic sneakers/ She's got her robuck purse") with an almost surf-rock swagger; or "Double Life": three chords, the tireless guitar-drums dialogue, and Easton once again stealing the show with a blazing solo in the middle section (as he does in the epic coda of "You Can't Hold On Too Long").

There's also the classic FM ballad, courtesy of Orr's warm pipes, this time going by the name "It's All I Can Do." And the band's secret British allegiance is confirmed once again, and not just through Baker's production or the Roxy Music imagery evoked by the cover art itself: the guitar intro of "Got A Lot On My Head" sounds like it was lifted straight from "Real Life" by Magazine, while the riff of "Dangerous Type" openly echoes T. Rex's "Bang A Gong."

An ambitious, sophisticated record, only slightly less "direct" than the debut, Candy-O boosts the Cars' stock on the threshold of a musical decade — the Eighties — of which Ocasek & co. can rightfully be considered among the most clear-sighted forerunners.

And the Cars' Eighties could only begin under the sign of synth-pop. Panorama (1980) marks the definitive triumph of the band's electronic soul, with keyboards overtaking guitars and an increasingly icy, rarefied sound. The epitome of this new direction is the long, unsettling title track: Orr's obsessive bass dictates mechanical cadences, guitar flourishes break against waves of synth, and Ocasek's frosty vocal ends up filtered through a vocoder. The single and high point of the record, though, is the dazzling "Touch And Go," another prodigious hybrid creature: wrapped in an electronic blanket of Hawkes' hiccuping keyboards, it unfolds with an irregular rhythm in the verses (bass and drums in 5/4, while guitar, synth and vocals stay in 4/4), gallops off with Easton's western-style guitars, and explodes into an irresistible, group-sung chorus. No less enjoyable are the lyrics, telling another tale of more or less fleeting pickups: “Well I know, it’s gone too far/ ah-oh, I touched your star/ and it felt so right/ just like a hush of midnight/ then you said to me/ it’s touch and go”. "Touch And Go" would also remain the record's only hit, though it wouldn't climb past No. 37 on the charts. Vocal experimentation grows too, with a kind of spoken delivery from Ocasek on the plastic-sounding "Misfit Kid" and Orr in spoken-word mode on the slow, atmospheric "You Wear Those Eyes," where, amid walls of keyboards, Easton carves out yet another miniature solo.

The problem with Panorama is that, "Touch And Go" aside, it's short on the breathtaking hooks that had made its predecessors great. Sure, "Running To You," with its refrain hammered out four times amid a flurry of guitars and synths, is a little gem, but what really elevates the record are the refined arrangements, the clean instrumental sound, and the musicians' virtuosity. It's impossible to stay unmoved by the relentless drumming and the carousel of space-videogame keyboards on "Getting Through," or by the low-flying rock guitars of "Gimme Some Slack." But where Ocasek tries to paint one of his airy refrains ("Up And Down"), things remain stuck halfway, while on "Don't Tell Me No" Orr's baritone fails to warm up an icy keyboard loop.

Uneven and partly unresolved as it is, Panorama marks another key step in the Cars' frantic run, already at the finish line of their third album in three years — a journey away from their punk roots in favor of a more "atmospheric" sound, not unlike the one Magazine had pursued a year earlier on "Secondhand Daylight," one of new wave's great misunderstood records.

Buoyed by the support of pop-art godfather Andy Warhol (who would also direct the video for "Hello Again"), but aware of having lost some of their commercial appeal, the Cars fire up their hit-making machine once more with Shake It Up (1981), recorded directly at the band's own Syncro Sound Studios. It's a decidedly more immediate, accessible album, starting with the title track and lead single: a bubblegum tune that races at full speed down memory's curves, propelled by bouncing little keyboard lines, all the way back to the fifties wellsprings of American rock'n'roll. "Shake It Up" would be the first Cars song to crack the Top Ten (No. 4 on Billboard) and would serve as the prototype for the "sprint" tracks on the later Heartbeat City ("Hello Again," "You Might Think," "Magic").

But there's also no escaping the hook of "Since You're Gone": Ocasek's usual tart falsetto framing an electronic novelty with a restless beat, embellished by Hawkes' meticulous keyboard work and Easton's guitar embroidery. The masterpiece, though, is a ballad where Ocasek, for once, steals the microphone from Orr, improvising as a languid crooner: "I'm Not The One" starts quietly amid ticking keyboards and drum-machine pulses, opening into a wistful, heartbroken chorus, and culminating in an even more solemn keyboard solo with an almost classical sweep.

The opening trio of songs, then, closely resembles the sparkling cocktail being shaken by the alluring blonde on the cover (another distinctly Roxy Music image). As the tracklist unfolds, though, the album loses a bit of altitude, settling into a pop-rock that's as catchy as it is, for the most part, mannered. Ocasek's class keeps otherwise minor episodes afloat, like "Victim Of Love" and "Think It Over," which return to the synthetic new wave of Candy-O, while Orr steers the FM rock of "Cruiser" and the inevitable hushed slow number "This Could Be Love" home with professional ease — though here the real feat is Hawkes' solo. And it's the keyboardist again who leaves his mark on "A Dream Away," with a precious melody garnishing another spoken-word passage set to the drum machine's cadence. Flesh-and-blood drummer David Robinson is left to reclaim his spot behind the kit on the intoxicating "Maybe Baby."

Having charmed with its opening triad, then, Shake It Up leaves a slight sense of incompleteness, as if Ocasek and company had reached a crucial crossroads in their career. It would fall to the next album to take the decisive turn: with Baker no longer at the production helm and an almost perfect level of internal chemistry, the Cars would launch their final assault on the charts, which this time would genuinely collapse under the pounding pulse of Heartbeat City.

Before their next long-player, however, the Cars stay off the grid for three years, during which Ocasek kicks off his solo career with Beatitude (1982), enlisting Hawkes and a handful of underground artists. The result is a sound far icier and more synthetic than that of the mother band, with long keyboard passages and vocals often filtered. An effective summary of this can be found in the opening, obsessive "Jimmy Jimmy," a portrait of a teenager in trouble, the more melodic "I Can't Wait," and the disorienting electronic score of "Out Of Control," co-written with Hawkes, while "Time Bomb" unveils unusual psychedelic leanings and the single "Something To Grab For" returns to rockier cadences more in line with the Cars.

Hawkes, too, indulges in a solo record, but Niagara Falls (1983) lacks the songs needed to properly showcase its author's instrumental skill.

Reunited after their solo escapades, the Cars synthesize all their previous insights, marrying them to a glossy aesthetic perfectly suited to the new MTV era. If there's one record that embodies Eighties pop, it's precisely Heartbeat City (1984). Detractors will find everything there is to loathe about a certain way of making music: ultra-polished production, sounds tweaked to the point of transfiguration, guitars subordinate to keyboards. Everyone else will recognize it as a masterpiece. A record so good that even its creators would never again manage to shake free of it. Indeed, while up to that point the band hadn't missed a step, racking up multi-million sales along the way, both the following Door To Door and Ocasek's solo work would founder trying to recapture the appeal of Heartbeat City.

The Boston band's fifth album, Heartbeat City represents the definitive arrival at a synth-pop formula, without forgetting the weapons that had defined the brand over the previous five years. Ocasek brings in Robert John "Mutt" Lange, the man behind AC/DC's worldwide explosion and effectively a sixth member of Def Leppard, with whom he'd turned the American charts upside down in 1983 thanks to "Pyromania," a bold and successful attempt to merge heavy metal with pop with the help of sampling and deluxe production. And here the result is even more effective.

"Hello Again," just under four minutes of super pop-rock, high-energy with multi-layered vocals, sprinting keyboards and synthetic guitars, is a covertly moralistic snapshot of these damned social climbers, the ones determined to be there no matter what, for better or worse: "Waiting for the sunshine, standing in the rain," electric, eclectic, dreamers, yet down to earth. But also romantic is "Looking For Love": arpeggiated guitar and whistling little keyboards, metallic rhythms, layered vocals, an easy up-tempo, classic Cars bubblegum, enhanced by technological research right in step with the times — never behind, but not a hair's breadth ahead either. Atmospheric and danceable. "Magic," yet another catchy pop nugget fired off with fairy-tale choruses, a celebration of the effects of the approaching American summer.

Calculator in hand, it's time for a ballad: "Drive" means pure melody, borrowed from Elvis Presley at his most aching, performed with great imitative flair by blond bassist Ben Orr, far more suited than Ocasek to showing up with a rose at his lady's door, blessed with a voice better matched to a retro style, albeit properly polished and tech-savvy. A smash hit, in short, backed by a dramatic video clip, with Ocasek himself looking thoughtful to the point of grim, while his young girlfriend Paulina Porizkova sheds hot tears. And the mood turns genuinely dark - whose are those "Stranger Eyes"? A betrayed lover, or one simply biding her time, perhaps plotting revenge. A metaphorical (and pomp-pop) reissue of the chemical trajectories once charted by Lou Reed?

So are the Cars just the Velvet Underground gone mass-market?! The dilemma crumbles for a moment, swept away by the joyful, frantic rhythm of "You Might Think," robotized rock'n'roll through which Ocasek voices his obsession with an obsessive (poor thing) Saturday-night conquest. And the video, one of the most endearing of its era, shows Ocasek chasing his prey by every means possible, eventually morphing into King Kong. Too bad the sunglasses-wearing ape, once he's caught the girl, lets her drop into the void... The sinister undertone is hard to shake even in outright comic situations. Which end quickly, since the next three songs speak the language of disillusion, failure and despair, cleverly disguised in disco-ready make-up, driving as on "It's Not The Night," "For sweet revenge, to call time on the game," more languid on "Why Can't I Have You" ("Baby, let me brush against you just once more, let me tell you you're always on my mind"), with choral backing vocals constantly seasoning Ocasek's spoken-sung delivery. A recipe reprised on "I Refuse," complete with vocoder-treated voices, synth splashes, stabbing little guitars, and a metronome that never stops.

It's the closing, title track, "Heartbeat City," though, that upends everything: 1984, the industry, pop as a whole. A new peak reached by the Cars, a breathless, mysterious ballad opening with an electronic flutter of wings. A song in which even Ocasek's typical delivery, syncopated and nervy, shifts register, turning soft, settled, sedated. Who is this Jacki who overcomes the city's frenzy, who lights up the metropolitan night? The toxic Velvet ghost comes back to make itself heard. But it's the backdrop, the melodic-harmonic dressing, that truly astonishes: a largely electronic architecture, handled on the textural level by the skillful use of the Fairlight, a groundbreaking digital machine capable of sampling and reproducing a myriad of sounds, painting landscapes that are warm, scorching, and, a moment later, icy and frightening. Five minutes in which pop becomes ambient, with discreet synthetic horns peeking through, filling the space with orchestral breadth. A nightmare turned paradise, amid the uncertainty of tomorrow. It's the definitive peak of both the Cars and Ocasek himself.

Heartbeat City climbs all the way to No. 3 on Billboard, also sending five singles into the American Top 40, two of which ("Drive" and "You Might Think") crack the Top 10 (No. 3 and No. 7 respectively). Riding the wave comes the inevitable compilation (The Cars Greatest Hits, 1985), which brings the Boston band's classics back into the spotlight, adding one new track ("Tonight She Comes") that faithfully follows the hyperkinetic blueprint of Heartbeat City and inevitably hits the mark on the charts.

That same year the Cars are also one of the acts at the epic Live Aid on July 13, in its American leg, staged in Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, though, Ric Ocasek is working on a new solo album, for which he's recruited a star-studded cast: Roland Orzabal of Tears For Fears, Tony Levin of King Crimson, Tom Verlaine (Television) and Steve Stevens, already a veteran of Billy Idol's band. Faithful Hawkes also lends a hand on keyboards and bass, plus a few cameos from Orr and Easton, while production is entrusted to Chris Hughes, former drummer of Adam and the Ants.

From this imposing show of force comes a solidly crafted record, This Side Of Paradise (1986), which confirms Ocasek's mettle as writer and performer, even if it adds little that's genuinely new to the repertoire already forged with the Cars, seeming instead to perpetuate certain of its tricks indefinitely: the sugary "Emotion In Motion," with Orzabal on guitar, echoes "Drive," the electro-rock of "Keep On Laughin'" apes "Heartbeat City" even more openly, in its intro, rhythm and arrangement, yet manages to retain much of its magic too. "True To You" effectively reunites the whole band - with Orr on backing vocals, Easton on guitar and Hawkes on keyboards - forging another graceful specimen of Cars-sound (immortalized in a famous video clip showing Ocasek plastering posters over Nick Cave's gig flyers on the streets of New York). The rubbery synth-pop of "Mystery," steeped in Japanese flavors, and the Devo-esque divertissement of "P.F.J.," with Verlaine on guitar, instead tie back to the early solo experiments of Beautitude.

The best of Ocasek, however, emerges amid the haze of the unsettling, taut "Coming For You" and the equally dark (as its title suggests) "Hello Darkness," two fine electronic-rock thrusts branded by fiery guitars, while the title track stretches time out into a long, calm meditation over an electronic base.

This Side Of Paradise is a small compendium of Ocasek's art, another foray - more discreet and minimalist - into the heart of the metropolis. At the time it paid the price for following in the shadow of its unwieldy predecessor; heard today, it may hold a few more pleasant surprises. Either way, it remains his most convincing solo work.

Meanwhile, after the global success of Heartbeat City, anticipation for the new Cars album is feverish. Door To Door (1987) arrives right on schedule, but doesn't repeat the miracle. The single "You Are The Girl" is yet another catchy-chorused upbeat number: pleasant, but nothing more. It will also be the only hit from an album that struggles to climb the charts, stalling at No. 26. Easton certainly hasn't stopped grinding out fiery riffs ("Strap Me In"), bordering on hard rock ("Double Trouble"), but the magical alchemy that kept the Cars' formula in balance seems to have dissolved, along with their knack for crafting breathtaking ballads: "Fine Line," "Go Away" and "Coming Up You" are just faded (and soporific) photocopies of their era-defining predecessors, while digging up two outtakes from the debut album ("Leave Or Stay" and "Ta Ta Wayo Wayo") adds little to the chapter of Ocasek's neurotic rockabilly.

Freshness and inspiration are missing, the Cars' engine is starting to spin its wheels, and the old euphoria is no longer felt within the band. Ocasek, eager to focus on his solo and production career, takes note and pulls the plug.

In February of the following year the Cars announce their breakup.

Ocasek disappears from the scene for a couple of years, resurfacing in the new decade with a solo album, Fireball Zone (1990), which turns out to be a spectacular dud. The single "Rockaway" wearily rehashes the usual formula, with driving guitars and female backing vocals, but lacks a chorus worthy of the name; the rest of the album sinks into flabby, flavorless pop-rock ("Touch Down Easy," "Come Back"), failing to regain its spark even on the ballads: "The Way You Look Tonight" dilutes the spleen of "Drive" into a bland chorus, "Over And Over" drags wearily through arpeggios and backing vocals. The last glimmer of clarity dissolves in "All We Need Is Love," in search of improbable reggae vibrations (!).

Better, then, his work as a producer, which in the Nineties sees Ocasek championing a sizable squad of indie artists: Suicide, Bad Brains, Guided By Voices, Weezer, Romeo Void, Hole, Bebe Buell, No Doubt, Nada Surf, Black 47, Bad Religion, Johnny Bravo, D Generation, The Wannadies, Possum Dixon, Martin Rev, Jonathan Richman and, more recently, The Pink Spiders.

In the studio, though, the problems continue. Quick Change World (1993) is a flop foretold from its troubled gestation: Ocasek wanted to make it a double album, half pop ("Right Side") and half experimental ("Left Side"), but Reprise Records forced him to cut it down to a single LP. He reluctantly agreed, but pulled a fast one on the label, releasing the full "Left Side" in Europe (under the title "Negative Theater") and putting out, on the American album, half of the "experimental" tracks that Reprise had, in all likelihood, wanted shelved. The result is an overly uneven, disorienting record, though certainly better than Fireball.

The heavy-pop riff of “She’s On,” the melodic openings of “Don’t Let Go,” the power-rock of “Hard Times” (an outtake from Heartbeat City) and yet another synthetic serenade in “Feeling’s Got To Stay” try to make appealing a work that mostly betrays Ocasek’s urge to try his hand at other things, from the urban noise of “Come Alive” to the electronically sterilized country of “Help Me Find America,” and a widespread use of spoken word (the opening “The Big Picture,” the title track, the unsettling “What’s On Tv”). Experiments that aren’t always on target, but on the whole worthwhile.

His passion for spoken recitation would find full expression in the following double album Getchertiktz, a bizarre experiment halfway between poetry and song, made together with Alan Vega. Ever more serious and avant-garde, the Ocasek of Getchertiktz (1996) attempts to capture turn-of-the-millennium New York in a series of cold, arty snapshots, alongside writer Gillian McCain and the Suicide frontman's delirious voice. But it's almost an exercise in itself, with no greater purpose. Too difficult to reach an audience, too self-indulgent to win over critics, the album would pass almost unnoticed.

For the following album, Troublizing (1997), Ocasek then decides to revitalize his sound with the (over)production of Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) and guest stars Melissa Auf der Maur, then bassist of Hole, Brian Baker (Bad Religion) on guitar and Ira Elliot of Nada Surf on keyboards. The result is a guitar pop record built on sharp, blaring riffs, pulsing beats and catchy choruses, all thickened by Corgan's heavy hand, who also plays guitar and keyboards on some tracks. But Ocasek's bow is missing its arrows - namely, the songs.

While the robust title track, featuring a solo from Nile Rodgers, and the even more aggressive, Pumpkins-esque “Not Shocked” provide a few thrills, other tracks betray an underlying confusion: from “The Next Right Moment,” with Melissa Auf der Maur wailing on backing vocals, to “Here We Go,” with its cascade of keyboards over a wall of guitars, through to “Fix On You,” yet another variation on the hard rock theme. Even the new spoken word experiments over keyboard backdrops (the gloomy “Society Trance” and the breezier “Hang On Tight”) fail to leave a mark, so perhaps what stands out most is the duet with Corgan on the folk-leaning “People We Know,” which lands the most successful melody of the bunch.

Increasingly an underground talent scout and less and less a rock star, Ocasek founds his own label, Sanctuary, to produce his proteges, but doesn't give up on a new solo album, nearly ten years after the previous one. Nexterday (2005), originally intended for web-only release, is a DIY record, almost entirely devoid of promotion. Minimalist and bare in its arrangements, driven by computer programming beats, it abandons the heavy edges of the partnership with Corgan, retreating instead into the house specialties: carefree little tunes for electrified guitars (“Crakpot,” “Bottom Dollar,” “Come On”), mechanical clockwork pieces with a vague wave ancestry (“Don’t Lose Me,” “In A Little Bit”), alienating spoken passages (“Carousel”), velvety ballads (“I’m Thinking,” “Please Don’t Let Me Down”). A decent effort, but nothing more.

Orr, meanwhile, has also gone solo, releasing the album The Lace, featuring the delicate “Stay The Night,” and forming a band called, fittingly, ORR in the mid-Nineties. But the story of the Cars' bassist (real name Benjamin Orzechowski) is a tragically marked one: suffering from pancreatic cancer, he would die in October 2000 at his home in Atlanta. Orr had been the band's melodic soul, the one most directly shaped by the dandyish romanticism of David Bowie and Roxy Music. His “Elvis-like” ballads will always be remembered as one of the finest trademarks of the Cars brand.

Easton, also the author of a solo album (Change No Change, 1985), counts instead a brief stint in a couple of bands (Tiki Gods and Band of Angels), as well as work as a producer and session musician for Jerry Lee Lewis, Brian Wilson and Creedence Clearwater Revisited.

Hawkes, finally, as we've seen, followed Ocasek behind the keyboards on most of his solo albums.

The Cars' name, meanwhile, has remained close to the hearts of their fans and beyond. On March 1, 1994, at Nirvana's last concert (Terminal Einz in Munich, Germany), shortly before his tragic end, Kurt Cobain paid tribute to “My Best Friend’s Girl,” explaining it had been one of his favorite songs since he was 15. Also rekindling interest is an essential box set, released by Warner as part of the Original Album Series for just 20 euros, containing the band's first five albums on CD.

The first signs of a sensational reunion of the Boston “cars” come in 2005, when Easton and Hawkes join a desperate Todd Rundgren chasing dollars with a spin-off band called The New Cars. Rounding out the line-up are two Rundgren collaborators, bassist Kasim Sulton and drummer Prairie Prince. In May 2006 this eccentric lineup releases the hybrid It’s Alive!, which gathers live-recorded Cars classics plus a few unreleased tracks (“Not Tonight,” “Warm” and “More”), which however only fuel nostalgia for the old band. Ocasek gives his blessing to the two defectors, limiting himself to saying: “I just want Elliot and Greg to be happy.”

But The New Cars is a project with no future: the album sells only 16,000 copies, and after a handful of live dates, in 2007 everyone goes their separate ways.

“I will never reunite the Cars again, you can count on that,” Ocasek had said in 1997. “I hate performing live and doubt I'll do it again in the future, so there's no problem if my old band plays with Todd Rundgren in my place,” he had added in 2005. And yet, evidently tired of watching yet another next big thing churn out tinny keyboard notes and rhythms on par with “Shake It Up,” he changed his mind. Reuniting with old friends Greg, Elliot and David, for a brand new album and a fairly packed calendar of on-stage dates. Out of respect, Orr was not replaced. Feeling comes first. And besides, those bass-keyboard parts lend a touch of modernity that doesn't hurt.

And so the Cars of Move Like This (2011) succeed where the recent Devo failed, managing to preserve a high level of songwriting while still adding new shades to their classic sound.

Leaving behind the overproduction of Door To Door, the spur-of-the-moment choices that mark Ocasek's entire solo career, but also the glossy, plastic style of Heartbeat City, it's as if the Bostonians had picked up the thread partly abandoned in the wake of Shake It Up, developing their synthetic traits further, yet without condensing them into the glittering exuberance of 1984. It's certainly hard to resist the game of pairings, setting the slow-burning “Soon” cheek to cheek with the classic “Drive” (the result is engaging, though the latter remains unmatched), or “Take Another Look” against “Why Can’t I Have You” (also good here, though mannerism may win out), but the overall tendency is to simplify, with essential, well-calibrated electronic textures layered over evergreen guitar riffs.

The opening one-two punch tenderly strokes the golden locks of Candy-O (“Blue Tip”) and then ruffles those of the front-row crowd, who won't be able to resist the elite-arena anthem “Too Late.” It's also hard to remain indifferent to killer choruses like the one in “Sad Song,” or not to dance with arms raised to the hard phrasing of “Keep On Knocking,” so neatly folded into a classic verse-bridge-chorus structure in which Ric hams it up like the mustachioed Bryan Ferry of “Let’s Stick Together.” All things considered, the power pop of “Free” is effective, if not for its excessive devotion to the golden days of fine duels with The Knack. What keeps this from being hailed as a miracle is, first and foremost, the comparison with a deliciously overbearing past, and then a few tracks running on autopilot (“It’s Only,” “Hits Me” above all).

Move Like This is an album that will sound anathema to the encyclopedists of rock permanently on duty, defending its magnificent and progressive fortunes, but it will certainly move those who can find in it the expression of a pure and, in its own way, unmatched talent.

Fans were waiting for another comeback, but on September 15, 2019 they were chilled by news bouncing out of New York: Ric Ocasek had been found dead in his Manhattan apartment. His wife, Paulina Porizkova, from whom he had been separated for a year, said Ocasek had been recuperating after surgery. It was she who found him lifeless. “I touched his cheek to wake him,” she said, “and realized he had passed peacefully during the night.”

His death came exactly a year after the band's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and it leaves an enormous void. Ocasek was one of the most far-sighted, perceptive and interesting figures in American rock of the last 40 years, both as a musician and, just as deservedly, as a producer.

Contributions by Davide Sechi (“Heartbeat City”) and Marco Bercella (“Move Like This”)

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