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 glam metal guitar solos and we know that not much is going to change. The sound might be a hair heavier, but Ocasek, who never really had much to say beyond cliche and never met a refrain he couldn’t repeat ad nauseum, offers no surprises.
I’m not sure why Ric fails on his own so utterly and completely. It’s not like The Cars were a democracy, he was always in charge.
But, if you listen to This Side of Paradise as though it was a Cars record, it’s fine. If you told someone it was a Cars record they might respond with, “Really? But it’s so much heavier….oh, well, maybe they changed their sound. A bit.”
And they wouldn’t be wrong. See, Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes plays on the entire record. Ben Orr sings backup on a bunch of songs, and that harder rocker I wrote about, “True to You”?. Features them and Elliot Easton’s guitar. So….save David Robinson (who I’m convinced Ric just didn’t care for), it is a Cars song.
It’s not until the end of side one that the promise of the very first few moments are made manifest. “Coming for You” is an ominous, dark, dangerous track sidelined only by Hawkes’ needless filigree. Other than that, it’s as close to what Ocasek’s been pretending to be about as anything else.
Like Beatitude before it, Paradise is a near waste of your time. Slow, meandering, uninspired and dull.
Grade: D+
ASide: Coming for You
BlindSide: True to You
DownSide: Mystery, True Love, PFJ
