#also it arguably surpassed my expectations because with her previous albums there's been songs i adore but others i don't care for that much
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jakeperalta Ā· 5 months ago
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I'm curious what's everyone's favourite new release album of the year so far? if you had to only pick one
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lifeonashelf Ā· 7 years ago
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CARS, THE
I donā€™t mean to be crassā€¦ (granted, I know an introductory repudiation like that will immediately lead you to assume that the ensuing statement is, indeed, going to be crass, and will probably cause you to brace yourself for a statement far more crass than the one Iā€™m actually going to makeā€”especially given this lengthy parenthetical, which is likely only serving to compound your trepidation about the prospective crassness of my forthcoming statement, because surely when you see such an interminable block of text following a declaration like ā€œI donā€™t mean to be crassā€ youā€™re bound to suppose that the statement Iā€™m cautioning must not only be crass, but so reprehensibly crass that it warrants a sprawling disclaimer before it can even be tenderedā€”although your concerns will be mostly unfounded because the statement Iā€™m eventually going to make, after I finish fucking with you via this gratuitous insert, isnā€™t really as crass as youā€™re undoubtedly expecting it to be; I didnā€™t write an additional 200-plus words after announcing ā€œI donā€™t mean to be crassā€ because I have any earnest intention of being crass, I did it because: a) Iā€™m an ass, and b) Iā€™m misguided enough to suppose this might be amusing in some way, when in fact the negligible comedic value of this passage is roughly equivalent to the relative crassness of the statement that will follow it, as youā€™ll find out right nowā€¦)
Actually, at this point, it would probably be prudent for me to start my sentence over again so that it bears some resemblance to a coherent thought.
So, to reiterate, I donā€™t mean to be crassā€¦ (although, it now dawns on me that perhaps devoting this exorbitant amount of text to introducing my statement may actually enhance its crassness, since the statement in question is one that potentially could be considered marginally crass by certain audiences, and the flippant manner in which Iā€™m addressing its potential crassness perhaps could be viewed as offensive by those audiences if they presume that my insouciant tangents here are demonstrative of an insensitivity to the possibility that some people might find the statement crassā€”which, consequently, might lead folks who wouldnā€™t customarily deem the statement in and of itself as crass to instead deem my exposition of the statement crassā€”and this means: a) I may be inadvertently rendering the statement crass when it was actually reasonably benign to begin with, and b) at this point, Iā€™ve probably pissed off just about everyone reading this, and I havenā€™t even made the statement yetā€”although I suspect that most of the people Iā€™ve displeased thus far are more upset that Iā€™ve wasted several minutes of their time on these ridiculous asides than they are about either the potential crassness of the statement I have not yet made or my perceived arrogant indifference to the potential crassness of that statement).
Anyway, I donā€™t mean to be crassā€¦ but the first thing I think of when I listen to The Cars is Phoebe Catesā€™s breasts.
Iā€™m not necessarily ashamed to admit this, though I am acutely aware that revealing this tinge of alpha-ā€œBOOBIES!ā€-maleness in myself doesnā€™t bask me in the most flattering light. In my defense, Iā€™m reasonably certain that most heterosexual males who have seen Fast Times At Ridgemont High have spent a lot more time thinking about Phoebe Catesā€™s breasts than I do (I donā€™t listen to The Cars very often). I am simultaneously aware that reducing a bandā€™s entire existence to a singular film sequence in which a mere snippet of one of their songs appears is awfully reductive of their legacy, particularly when the band in question certainly merits a far more substantial appreciation. However, since I have been mercilessly honest throughout this exercise, I would be remiss in my methodology if I wasnā€™t forthcoming about my inescapable mental link between The Cars and the mammary magnificence of the lovely Phoebe Cates.
Rest assured, I have no desire to herein objectify Mrs. Cates-Kline (she married Kevin Kline in 1989, which rhymes). For the record, I would like to clarify that I find her far more appealing in Gremlins, a film in which she eschews demonstrating advanced oral sex techniques on carrots to instead deliver a super-gnarly monologue about discovering her fatherā€™s decomposing corpse in the family chimney after he breaks his neck while trying to impersonate Santa Claus. Based on the five or so additional movies of hers Iā€™ve seen, I think she was a perfectly excellent actress and Iā€™m duly curious why she opted not to sustain that burgeoning career. Sincerely, I have the utmost respect for Phoebe Cates-Kline, and if sheā€™s reading this I hope that message will come through loud and clear. Still, as I sit here listening the The Carsā€™ self-titled debut, I canā€™t help but evoke her iconic pool-side disrobing in Fast Times; ā€œLiving in Stereoā€ is so firmly intertwined with that specific sequence in the pop-cultural consciousness that thereā€™s simply no escaping the associationā€”much like itā€™s impossible to listen to ā€œDonā€™t You (Forget About Me)ā€ without clips from The Breakfast Club running through your head, or to hear ā€œGoodbye Horsesā€ without recalling Ted Levineā€™s tucked-penis shimmy in Silence of the Lambs. And this interference is proving to be detrimental to my process, since Iā€™d rather not make my ability to readily visualize Catesā€™s areolas every time I hear the opening riff of ā€œLiving in Stereoā€ the ultimate focus of this essay. Iā€™m only mentioning this telekinetic linkage up front in the spirit of getting it out of the way so I can write something more thoughtful about The Carsā€”which Iā€™m sure Phoebe Cates, Ric Ocasek, Kevin Kline, and the seven other people reading this would greatly prefer.
Actually, come to think of it, I suppose I could have skipped that entire introduction. Iā€™m just now realizing I have a personal connection with The Cars which handily surpasses my limited fandom for an ā€˜80s teen comedy that I recently watched for the first time since I was an actual teenager and didnā€™t find all that extraordinary upon revisiting (the scene where ā€œLiving In Stereoā€ plays was still pretty amazing, though). My band Happyending used to cover a Cars numberā€”ā€œJust What I Neededā€ā€”so Iā€™ve actually played that tune on my guitar more times than Iā€™ve played it in my CD player; since this is a designation I can only apply to a small handful of songs, that correlation is surely more exclusive and well-suited for our purposes here. Iā€™m fairly positive Phoebe Cates never attended any of our gigs, so her presence in this essay is arguably extraneous (also, it seems downright bizarre to me that Iā€™ve referenced Gremlins, of all films, two entries in a row; I honestly have no fucking idea whatā€™s going on with this piece right now). Ā I probably should have just led with the Happyending thing and spared us all from the previous six paragraphs entirely, so do me a favor and donā€™t read any of the stuff you just read.
Anyway, welcome to this installment of Life on a Shelf. Itā€™s about The Cars.
ā€œJust What I Neededā€ was an incredibly fun song to jam. Since we didnā€™t have a keyboard player to tackle the melody, Happyendingā€™s version emphasized the tuneā€™s power-chord bedrock and our arrangement sprawled out in the middle before eventually culminating in a cacophonous blast-beat meltdown which bore no resemblance to anything in Ric Ocasekā€™s original compositionā€”essentially, we sullied the trackā€™s pure pop perfection to suit our own purposes. Nevertheless, our rendition rawked and we always got an enthusiastic response whenever we slotted it into our setlists, so we sullied it often and with gleeful abandon.
Ultimately, we could have probably tackled any cut off the bandā€™s self-titled LP and made a decent go of it, simply because the source material is so dynamite. The Carsā€™ eponymous introduction is one of the most exceptional and self-assured debut albums in the rock canon, a cohesive and nearly flawless set of songs that establishes a fertile and wholly original musical language in less than forty minutes. I would place the circa-1978 Cars in that rarified class of bands who sounded like no one but themselves, and though they would promptly inspire countless lesser New Wave outfits, none of their imitators fully cracked Ric Ocasekā€™s code and very few managed to scrape together anything even remotely as hooky or indelible as the choicest morsels on The Cars.
Perhaps the most exceptional heritage of the bandā€™s inaugural opus is that it still sounds futuristic three-and-a-half decades after it was released (ā€œIā€™m In Touch With Your Worldā€, in particular, is so spacey and bizarre that it seems totally plausible Ocasek recorded the track on another planet), no lean feat considering how manifestly dated the bulk of the synth-rock which arrived in its wake sounds today. ā€œJust What I Neededā€ is arguably the albumā€™s centerpieceā€”and itā€™s certainly catchy as a motherfuckerā€”yet it isnā€™t even one of my personal top-three tracks on the disc (we ended up covering it mostly because I figured out the chords by accident). My favorite song remains ā€œMoving in Stereoā€, for reasons that have nothing to do with Phoebe Cates (okay, maybe a little) and everything to do with the indisputable fact that ā€œMoving in Stereoā€ just plain fucking rules.
On a collection loaded with shindig-ready anthemsā€”a motif announced by the discā€™s opening statement, ā€œGood Times Rollā€ā€”ā€œMoving in Stereoā€ stands out like an alluring black-clad femme fatale brooding in the corner smoking clove cigarettes and quoting Nietzsche while she dispassionately surveys the revelers on the dance floor. If I was at a party and the host put on The Cars, I would immediately like this host at least 70% more than I did when I arrivedā€”and if I spotted a girl across the room singing along with ā€œMoving in Stereoā€ I would immediately march over there and propose to her on the spot (okayā€¦ I know this is a completely ridiculous notion; I donā€™t go to parties). ā€œMovingā€ is the song on the album The Cars which sounds the least like the band The Cars, yet conversely demonstrates the breadth of their creativity, offering a grim counterpoint to bouncy numbers like ā€œDonā€™t Cha Stopā€ and augmenting the somber undercurrent which runs through several cuts whose buoyant instrumental backdrops cunningly mask their lyrical proclamations that the good times donā€™t always roll.
Witness my second-favorite song on the disc, ā€œYouā€™re All Iā€™ve Got Tonightā€, in which Ric Ocasek bluntly tells his gal that she can ā€œhurt,ā€ ā€œuse,ā€ ā€œmock,ā€ and ā€œabuseā€ him, but ā€œ[he] donā€™t careā€ because heā€™d be far more distraught if she left him. All things considered, thatā€™s a pretty fucked up scenario. Though probably not quite as fucked up as the one outlined in ā€œMy Best Friendā€™s Girlā€ā€”a chronicle of the bro-codeā€™s most grievous violation: ā€œmy best friendā€™s girlfriend / she used to be mine.ā€ ā€œBye Bye Loveā€ (probably my third-favorite song, if youā€™re keeping score at home) sort of speaks for itself, and even the otherwise jaunty ā€œJust What I Neededā€ takes a disquieting turn when Ocasek eventually confesses that ā€œI needed someone to bleed.ā€ And then the albumā€™s moody closer ā€œAll Mixed Upā€ comes along to decisively end the party with the knife-in-the-guts couplet: ā€œI wait for her forever / she never does arrive.ā€
Perhaps the only failing of The Cars is that it serves up such an impeccable distillation of everything I enjoy about the band it shares its title with that until I reached this point in our tome, it was the sole offering of theirs I felt compelled to own. Although, I finally opted to bolster my discography with 1979ā€™s Candy-O and their 1984 set Heartbeat City a few days ago to foster a more comprehensive representation in these pages (though I willfully neglected Shake it Up because the title track kind of annoys me). The results of my supplementary reconnaissance are as follows:
Candy-O has plenty of inspired moments, but much of the material the band cooked up for their sequel audibly labors under the onus of the dreaded sophomore slump. A few of the tracks sound like throwaways from the first album, others come across as vague sketches of songs that werenā€™t quite ready to be recorded, and a couple are so blatantly derivative of the highpoints of The Cars that they become essentially pointless. Granted, opener ā€œLetā€™s Goā€ is easily on par with the groupā€™s best work, and the following number (ā€œSince I Held Youā€) is cagily excellent as well. But the discerning listener can plainly hear The Cars running out of gas as the record motors on (trust me, I know how obvious and dad-jokey the employment of automobile puns is in this caseā€¦ but I havenā€™t used a single one until now, so please park your criticisms). By the next trackā€”ā€œItā€™s All I Can Doā€ā€”the band is clearly spinning its wheels (shit, car pun; that one was an accident; shit, ā€œaccidentā€ could be considered a car pun too) and that tire-d (okay, I did that one on purpose) cookie-cutter composition finds the band idling (yeah, that one was on purpose too), marking the first point in their catalog where The Cars stall (I should probably put the brakes on this lame device now, huh?).
Though the funky title track perks up the affair a bit and ā€œNight Spotsā€ is likewise wholly decent, the second half of Candy-O is bogged down by a succession of tepid retreads (I swear I didnā€™t mean to include another reference to tires there) and the album fails to really take off again (okay, that was a plane pun, which is just confusing). The discā€™s nadir ā€œLust for Kicksā€ is banal enough to qualify as certifiably crappy, shackled as it is by a dopey melody that would sound more at home pealing from the loudspeaker of a trolling ice cream truck. Like most Part-Twos, the fundamental fault with Candy-O is that itā€™s simply nowhere near as strong as its predecessor (overall, itā€™s only slightly better than Gremlins 2: The New Batch), even if its sturdiest moments demonstrate that The Cars still had enough of a pulse to be interesting.
Ā Speaking of pulses, Iā€™m listening to Heartbeat City right nowā€¦ and Iā€™m regretting that pun already. Iā€™m also regrettably ascertaining that the spark of timelessness which characterized the bandā€™s early work faded rather quickly for themā€”despite being released only six years after their debut, City contains very few of the formerā€™s charms and resonates as an album which could have ONLY been made in 1984. This is mostly due to the flaccid production of ā€œMuttā€ Lange, whose abiding steadfastness to characterless grandiloquence later transformed Def Leppard from marginally-ballsy hard rockers into scrubbed-shiny arena darlings whose songs all sounded like jingles for shampoo commercials. Itā€™s perhaps fitting, then, that the a cappella refrain which introduces the opening track ā€œHello Againā€ evokes Joe Elliot more than it evokes Ric Ocasekā€”actually, several of the tunes on City could have easily appeared on Hysteria with minimal tweaking, which perhaps says volumes more about the uniform soullessness of Langeā€™s twiddling than it does about either The Cars or Def Leppard. Ā 
Though Heartbeat City spawned two of Ocasekā€™s biggest singlesā€”ā€œYou Might Thinkā€ and ā€œDriveā€ā€”itā€™s a fairly pedestrian offering on the whole, and a far cry from the not-then distant age when The Cars managed to build full suites of great cuts around their radio anthems. ā€œMagicā€ resonates like it was specifically written to accompany the pivotal montage scene in a direct-to-VHS Jon Cryer romantic comedy, ā€œI Refuseā€ is so anodyne that it could have been a Kajagoogoo b-side, and even the solid mega-hit ā€œYou Might Thinkā€ is essentially a reductive re-write of ā€œJust What I Neededā€. ā€œStranger Eyesā€ boasts some of the dark promise of ā€œLiving in Stereoā€ and makes good use of its sturdy Tom Petty-esque guitar lick, but the trackā€™s momentum is woefully hamstrung by Langeā€™s saccharine sheen, which neuters David Robinsonā€™s propulsive stick-work to such a degree that the drum tracks sound like the percussion presets on a $7.99 Radio Shack keyboard. ā€œDriveā€ is assuredly the best tune in the bunch, yet even that apex ends up being more perplexing than effective since the lone resemblance it bears to the bandā€™s other work is that it appears on a record by the band The Cars.
Ā Sadly, while my ardor for the groupā€™s first LP remains stalwart, my investigation of their subsequent offerings is only serving to reveal that I donā€™t love The Cars nearly as much as I love The Cars. I might have been better off sticking with that solitary disc in my library (though you would have missed out on all those genius vehicular bon mots I threw at you a few paragraphs back)ā€”as things stand, itā€™s highly unlikely Iā€™ll be cueing up Candy-O or Heartbeat City in its place next time Iā€™m in the mood to immerse myself in Ric Ocasekā€™s stellar song-craft or envision the nipples of retired ā€˜80s actresses.
We wonā€™t get a Hollywood Ending to this piece, Iā€™m afraid. As we roll the credits here, our protagonist (or maybe Iā€™m the antagonist of this opusā€”Iā€™m never quite sure) still hasnā€™t met his Nietzsche-citing clove smoker, and now heā€™s dispirited to discover that he doesnā€™t adore the band heā€™s writing about as completely as he thought he did.
Plus, Kevin Kline probably wants to punch me in the face now. Just what I needed.
I know what youā€™re thinkingā€¦ A song-title gag is about the laziest way I could wrap this thing up, even more unimaginative than settling for another witless car pun, right?
Whatever. Boobies.
Ā August 1, 2015
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