If you married a Sports Illustrated swimsuit-issue
cover girl, you might ditch your multiplatinum band for a quarter
century or so, too.
The last time The Cars made a record a wall divided
Berlin, cassettes outsold CDs, and NBA MVP Derrick Rose didn’t
exist. So it is remarkable that “Move Like This,” the band’s new
album, sounds at home both on contemporary radio and within The
Cars’ genre-bending oeuvre.
The Atariesque blips and bleeps that begin album opener
“Blue Tip” hit the listener as a sonic invitation to the 1980s. But
the party therein is less Reagan-era reunion than modern hipster
house party. Greg Hawkes’ keyboards are more Crystal Castles than
Flock of Seagulls. Lyrical references to bellybutton rings announce
that we’re not in 1982 anymore. The sing-along single, “Sad Song,”
would feel out of place on a weekend radio nostalgia
program.
That’s an accomplishment. Nobody apparently told The Cars
that revival acts mail it in, don’t dare incorporate musical
developments beyond their golden age, and essentially become cover
bands of their former selves. Unlike so many offerings from retread
rockers, “Move Like This” is not an advertisement, or an excuse,
for a summer-shed tour.
“Move Like This” won’t change the world or revolutionize
music. It will make the 37 minutes and 45 seconds that you listen
more pleasant than the 37 minutes and 45 seconds that you don’t. In
that unpretentious aspiration, it is like so much of the music from
the band’s heyday. But it is on present-day playlists because it
aurally fits the here and now and not the then and gone.
So how does a band that hasn’t released an album since
1987 sound so 2011?
Singer/songwriter Ric Ocasek, a sought-after producer for
Weezer, No Doubt, and Guided by Voices, evidently remained current
through his behind-the-curtains work in the music
industry.
Current also caught up with The Cars. The vampire vocals
of The National’s Matt Berringer, the retrofuturistic keyboards of
The Killers, and the catchy hooks of The Strokes all pay homage,
wittingly or not, to The Cars. Everything old is eventually new
again — even New Wave.
It’s also probably true that bands subscribing to the New
Wave ethos believe it obligatory to sound like the future. Fidelity
to this ethos paradoxically confined the futuristic music to its
era. That which made it fresh now makes it terribly
stale.
Nothing appears so dated to today as yesterday’s vision of
tomorrow. When Gary Numan and the Human League represented the
sonic future, you couldn’t blame the 1980s throngs who retreated to
the classic-rock-radio 1970s refuge. The ubiquitous Led Zeppelin
t-shirt was at least as much protest fashion in these years as
wearing Che Guevara upon one’s chest.
The synthesizer was anathema to the guitar gods Hendrix,
Clapton, and Page — at least that is what their worshippers
believed. But keyboards and guitars peacefully coexisted in The
Cars. The band embraced the synth-happy trends without being
overcome by them.
New Wave boasts an inordinate number of permanent
residents of One-Hit Wonderville. Ocasek and company transcended
that fate by transcending the genre. The Cars, like, well, cars,
offered a variety of models. There’s New Wave Cars (“Moving in
Stereo,” “Since You’re Gone”), Adult Contemporary Cars (“Drive,”
“Magic”) Pop Cars (“Shake It Up,” “You Might Think”), and Album
Oriented Rock Cars (“Best Friend’s Girl,” “Let the Good Times
Roll”). Their arrival, slightly before New Wave’s, helped ensure a
career beyond the brief lifespan of New Wave.
Popular music issues a constant challenge to hit the ear
in a way that it has never been hit. Acts habituated to a sound
(AC/DC being the sole exception) find fewer and fewer interested
ears. The Cars’ longevity — 1976 to 1988 is a century in
popular-music years — stemmed from its ability to adapt and
overcome. The success of its comeback, being of the rare kind that
works in practice as well as in theory, owes much to the band’s
ability to roll with the pop-culture punches.
“I don’t relate to the things they say and I don’t want to
be like them today,” Ocasek sings on “Hits Me,” the album’s coda.
“I gotta just get through these changing times.” That’s just what
The Cars have done on “Move Like This.”
