The Album Review Club – Week #33
The Cars – Candy-O (1979)
Selected by
FogBlueInSanFran
Well done to
@Mancitydoogle -- the animals in my clue are all associated with cars (Mustang, Bee(a)tle, Jaguar), and my selection is The Cars’ second record “Candy-O” from 1979.
This is an album I’ve loved for over 40 years. After the rush I got with Bad//Dreems, I almost changed my selection to something garage-ier (pun intended), but I revisited this album recently and I still enjoy it a lot. So here we go.
To some extent The Cars were the punchier new wave Roxy Music, or maybe The Ramones meet Roxy Music, if Gary Numan was somehow, you know, in The Ramones (and therefore named Gary Ramone).
Unlike most fans I have always thought "Candy-O" is the best of what they had to offer. Most early fans would say their first record is definitive; pop fans would say “Heartbeat City” is. But I like this one because it’s bouncier, rockier, more cynical, has sharper guitar, and keyboard hooks everywhere.
This record takes me back to age 14 when suddenly punk was morphing to new wave and suddenly bleeding into pop and suddenly on the radio. Music was changing fast and everything was on the table, as became apparent in the early 1980s.
Like The Pretenders, The Cars were one of the most influential transitional bands everyone always forgets to cite – at least in the States, they were one of the first tagged with the “new wave” label who broke into pop radio. Surprisingly few followed them at the time, which is one of the reasons they retain their freshness, IMO. No one’s ever really sounded quite like them.
Noted physically-unattractive singer-guitarist geek Ric Ocasek has just as distinctively thin a vocal range as David Byrne without the quirkiness, but a lot of the best songs come from bassist Benjamin Orr (he who wrote and sang their biggest hit “Drive”), and Greg Hawkes’ semi-cheesy keyboards and Elliot Easton’s super-clean guitar all contribute a lot too.
The lyrics are pretty direct – girls screw up guys’ lives, and as nice as we try to be, we all get hammered in the end and they win, and thus men are resigned to a dark obsessiveness. I’d take this theme more seriously if Ocasek hadn’t nabbed Paulina Porizkova, one of THE super-models of the era. Rich rock stars have it tough, eh?
Romantic obsession is where the Bryan Ferry comparisons are pretty apt, though Ferry had (has?) style, while Ocasek decidedly did not. Roxy Music is also much more a collection of crazed genius weirdo musicians than The Cars.
As usual for me when it comes to pop, I like quality and quantity and to love a record I need every song to stand on its own as one that I’d put on shuffle, and to me, this record is chock full of potential singles beyond the three that were released. But one that was deserves special mention.
A long time ago bluemoon had a “perfect song” thread, and I think I offered up Sugar’s “If I Can’t Change Your Mind”, but I am certain I thought through a few Cars songs, especially “It’s All I Can Do” with its clever, wistful lyrics (“One too many times / I twisted the gate / When I was crazy / I thought you were great”), pristine guitar solo and chorus harmony with the organ chords backing up the last stanza and sending the whole tune soaring. I love it.
The opener (“Let’s Go”) is fun, and the two closers are strong, especially “Dangerous Type”. About the only weak spot is “Lust For Kicks.” “Shoo Be Doo” is a little odd (and less than two minutes long), but morphs right into “Candy-O” and “Nightspots”, two completely different songs (one rocks, one bounces) but my favo(u)rite 1-2 punch on the record.
I don’t think The Cars were quite as popular in the UK as the US, but if you don’t know them or aren’t old enough to remember the emergence and confluence of pop and new wave, this record marks a great examination of that crossroads.
Happy listening!
