THE CARS: PANORAMA (1980)
1) Panorama; 2) Touch And Go;
3) Gimme Some Slack; 4) Don't Tell Me No; 5) Getting Through; 6) Misfit Kid; 7)
Down Boys; 8) You Wear Those Eyes; 9) Running To You; 10) Up And Down.
Perhaps Ocasek and Orr, too, had a suspicion
that the magic did not work as efficiently with Candy-O as it did with The
Cars — that the album gave too much of an impression that they were trying consciously
and somewhat artificially to recreate what used to come so naturally and
effortlessly. Either that, that is, or someone in the record business just slapped
them around and said, «So you think you're some hot New Wave stuff? I'll tell
you who's really New Wave — Gary
Numan is! He's not even using any guitars now, that stuff's so on its way out!» And thus, as the
Eighties rolled in, it was decided that the sound had to modernize.
Do not be misled, however, by the frequent
descriptions of Panorama as a dark,
experimental, less accessible album than the usual Carfare — sure it is
somewhat darker, mainly because it relies more on bass-happy keyboards than
colorful power-pop guitars, but there's nothing particularly «experimental»
about it compared to the general post-punk boom of 1980, and as for less
accessible, well, The Cars were always
oriented at the pop market, and even at their most deviant they had to look for
instrumental earworms and catchy singalong choruses. And they were never a
bunch of shiny happy people anyway — feeling miserable, if not on the surface,
then deep down in the core at least, was always an obligatory component of even
their biggest hits.
Anyway, I do not support the school of thought according
to which, in basic quality terms, The Cars took a huge dip down with Panorama, and later had to go through a
period of convalescence and atonement with the more traditional Shake It Up. At least in the overall
context of their career, Panorama
introduces some fresh change — and, for what it's worth, the general quantity
and quality of the hooks is hardly below the same parameters for Candy-O. I can certainly live with the
relative lack of guitar (relative —
it is still an integral part of the sound, and most of the solos are
guitar-based), and I can understand the sometimes questionable stretching out
of song lengths: the band is getting a little bit artsier, and that means
requiring a little more time for the build-up or for the groove to achieve the
proper hypnotizing effect.
For some reason, I used to really dislike the
title track — probably because the nearly six-minute length got to me in the
wrong way, but I eventually grew accustomed to its paranoid groove, not to
mention that, finally, we have a
proper album opener for a band named The Cars, as its tempo and atmosphere are
so perfectly compatible with a nighttime drive on a lonely highway. At the
heart of what begins as a sort of proto-Depeche Mode synth-pop runner really lies
a desperately frantic classic rocker, and it's worth waiting for the climactic
moment at about 3:55 into the song when Easton finally breaks through with a
crazy-aggressive rock solo, unfortunately, spliced into several small bits
rather than allowing the guitarist to stretch out and spill it all in one
mega-burst. It is their only attempt at properly doing that «bitter-fast
post-punk wail song» that everybody else was doing at the time, and there's
enough atmospheric tension and individual guitar / synth hooks here to stand
the competition.
The three singles from the album weren't too
bad, either: ʽTouch And Goʼ is melodically astute, going from a tricky
polymeter structure in the verse (that creates quite a confusing feel) to a
«relieving», bouncy ska-like chorus resolution; ʽDon't Tell Me Noʼ is the
album's most robotic number, with a dark (generic, though) arena-rock riff and a
mechanically soulless keyboard part that agree perfectly with Orr's half-human,
half-machine vocals dropping lyrical lines that eerily resemble a modern
chatbot ("It's my party. You can come. Don't tell me no"); and only
ʽGimme Some Slackʼ seems somewhat silly in comparison, probably because the
chorus is based on a really dumb-sounding hook (bad synth tone, too), but it's still
catchy.
The non-singles, largely stuck on the second
side, range from ironically catchy declarations of insecurity (ʽMisfit Kidʼ) to
pissed-off rockers with increased guitar presence (ʽDown Boysʼ may have
Easton's angriest guitar riff ever on a Cars song) to slow, smoky ballads stuck
somewhere between old-school psychedelia and new-school adult contemporary
(ʽYou Wear Those Eyesʼ: not a great song, but that's one great wobbly guitar tone Easton is using for the lead parts). Not
everything is equally memorable, but, really, not a single song is openly bad —
the craft and light experimentation that went into every one of them seems
obvious to me.
It's not as if I were heavily recommending Panorama over Candy-O, even if my tone for the previous review may seem distinctly
bluer than for this one. In Spartan terms of melody and hooks, the two are
quite on the same level — the only difference is that here, they are trying to
construct a different atmosphere, in which they sometimes succeed and sometimes
fail, but at least it provides a feeling of artistic growth, and that's good
enough for me. It wasn't good enough for the public, who weren't amused and
pretty much humiliated ʽTouch And Goʼ in the charts (none of that depressed
shit for the US of A in the happy summer of 1980 — not at a time when we have
Olivia Newton-John singing ʽMagicʼ, at least!). But it's good enough for me to
confirm another thumbs
up and insist that, even if one hates it, one has at least to admit
that Panorama proved that The Cars
were not merely a well-oiled,
perfectly programmed, finalized, and locked hit-writing machine operating on
one single algorithm.
This album tries so hard not to rely on hook after hook like the first two albums. The issue to me is the two standout songs Don't Tell Me No and Touch And Go recycle the same ideas so even with them focusing on other tricks the things people paid attention to seemed lacking in real effort.
ReplyDeleteThey sold themselves in a specific way then tried to suddenly change direction and that's not what the fans wanted.
Loving the Cars reviews, George. I hold Candy-O in a bit higher regard/see it as less derivative than you, though. Given that you respect Panorama, I suggest that Candy-O should be seen as a bridge between the debut and Panorama, particularly Double Life through Nightspots. Candy-O's arrangements are much more arty and arguably more interesting than those on The Cars (the difference between the Nightspots demo on the Cars collection and the finished version illustrates this well). Back to Panorama, I also think You Wear Those Eyes is a very good-to-great song; it does justice to the early VU ballads it worships.
ReplyDelete