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 scored their best album since their debut.
They haven’t abandoned their futurism, their love of all things antiseptically controlled, but they are a band again…of sorts.
Robinson is still programming more than playing and Hawkes’ keys are…well…they’re everywhere.
The hits are snappy and hit the target dead on. But, even the secondary tracks, “Looking for Love”, for instance, are stellar. In the case of “Looking”, the band seems to be embracing their power pop roots, with nearly treacly sweet backing harmonies, which gets back to what they were about in the first place: bridging the past with the future. They were always basically a 1-4-5 rock group dressed up in skinny ties and slotted shades.
Lange puts his magic touch on tracks like…well….”Magic” and “You Might Think” and the lovely superhit, “Drive” and comes up with winners on each. I can’t say enough about “Drive”. Not only was the video a winner, but this is the first time in a long time that Orr takes vocal lead and push a song just that much higher. His is a non-descript, bland 80’s one, but that makes it perfect for the track. And the wall to wall synth sound that Lange produced is everything that The Cars have been trying to come up with on their own for a couple years, since Panorama, really, and weren’t successful. His is such a milestone of 80s sound but, listening today, it sounds nostalgic and fresh.
Even on the inevitable Hawkes/Ocasek collaboration, “It’s Not the Night”, the band sounds alive and excited. It’s a rocker and, truth be told, I didn’t think Hawkes had it in him. I still don’t. I credit Lange and Orr, who performed the vocals. Weird that this album would have the most cohesive and shiny backing vocals when RTB was Queen’s producer. It should have been the other way around, no?
The Cars never wrote anything more than passable piffle. Pop Roc Candy. Earworms. As far as that kind of music goes, it doesn’t get better than this.
Grade A+
ASide: Hello Again, Magic, Drive, You Might Think, Why Can’t I Have You
BlindSide: Looking for Love, Stranger Eyes, It’s Not the Night, Heartbeat City
