Allen Lulu

Benjamin Orr – The Lace – 1986 Do you like “Drive”? Oh, good. Then you would like 60% of this album. Wait, what? You say you don’t need to hear mid-tempo, synth driven, electric drum driven 2nd rate Cars songs?Oh. Then skip it. It’s not that The Lace is BAD. Continue Reading

Ric Ocasek – This Side of Paradise – 1986 Opening with an abstract, paranoid soundscape, “Keep on Laughing” suggests that it might be Ocasek’s Low or Lodger but, in no time, those familiar Cars tropes kick in, the steady, mechanical beat, the airless, futuristic, spacey environs, this time buttressed up against Continue Reading

Who knew Elliot Easton could sing? Or even warble? I certainly didn’t think he would be the first non-Ocasek Car out of the garage with a solo album. Co-written with Jules Shear, I’ll say this for it, it tries. The entire MO seems to be to let Easton out of Continue Reading

The Cars – Heartbeat City – 1984 Hello.Hello Again. Dumping their longtime producer, The Cars hooked up with hitmaker Mutt Lange, got back to what made them great in the first place, namely, catchy songs, became the darlings of MTV, had Andy Warhol direct and co-star in a video and Continue Reading

Why does this exist? At the height of The Cars’ fame, just after they cracked the top 10 with their single, “Shake It Up”, their lead singer, lead song writer, control freak who, according to stories at the time, dictated what each member would play, forcing the drummer to program Continue Reading

The Cars – Shake It Up – 1981 More of the same.Better production, though. The muddled sounds of early 80’s cocaine induced production are gone. I’m not saying they were doing anything, this band seems like the last one to partake in anything mind altering save keyboards. But, that’s what Continue Reading

The Cars – Panorama – 1980 Otherwise known as “what happens when a pop rock band with arty ambitions abandons the pop and much of the rock in favor of the arty?”Panorama is a mess. The song. The album. It’s a droning, muzzled, over controlled mess.Ocasek seems to be overly Continue Reading

The Cars – Candy-O – 1979 When you know how to do one thing and you do can do that thing perfectly, why change your formula?That seems to be The Cars’ motto on this album, following one year after their debut. Now, I’ve said it many times that if this Continue Reading

The Cars – The Cars – 1978 Thirty plus years after it was one of the most spun records of my youth I’m struck by something listening to The Cars’ eponymous debut again: “Let the Good Times Roll” is a weird opener, a near laconic, stoner rocker. The kind of Continue Reading