Alan Vega
Saturn Strip

Alan Vega is not limited to the OGM rockabilly or post-modern anxieties. Alan Vega remains a cultural saboteur, an outsider without the pride of being one, an experimenter despite himself (1). What can you really hold against him, if he decides to give in to Ric Ocasek's 'enticements' and converts his sound?

Intrusive dance beats and baritonal drums without cymbals: that's how the album starts with the opening "Saturn Drive"... When the guitars kick in, and even a solo arrives, you relax: it is 80s electronic rock, not dance... Vega becomes more theatrical, and his voice improves with each album; it becomes firmer, more confident. His 'passages' - for it’s not quite right to call them true verses - are solid, his sonic inventions, his squawks, his imitations, the caricatured sonic creatures are, as usual, completely unpredictable.

His songwriting moves between root-rock creatures with an added chromosome - as with his previous works -, tracks in the mold of Suicide - especially the aforementioned "Saturn Drive" and the ballad "Je T'Adore" -, and even stylistic figures previously foreign to him: catchy, almost easy tracks where Vega is not a crooner suffering from cirrhosis stuck inside a whiskey bar in Alabama, but a true singer, and what a singer! Sharp, delicate when needed, compelling when it counts. "American Dreamer" just lacks a chorus, "Wipeout Beat" doesn’t need one (and rocks), and "Goodbye Darling" will have you bouncing within thirty-five seconds, tops.

Everything works so well that it is impossible not to give due credit to Ric Ocasek (an artist I feel I somewhat know...), who takes the most "suicidal" episodes and, unable to strip them down with Martin Rev's ten fingers, decides to dress them up with technology and/or recording techniques, while always keeping the wall of sound high. An Ocasek who transforms the 'rides' "Video Babe" and "Kid Congo" into completely original soundtracks for non-existent video games ("Video Babe" will also be a single), as he often succeeds in his spoken word pieces he composes for the Cars and his solo albums; who takes Alan Vega and the concluding "Every 1's A Winner" and turns them into Lou Reed and "Sweet Jane II"; who takes "Goodbye Darling" and makes it into a stadium punk song... Who brings all the AOM flavor, but also all his new wave stylishness and his yuppie-like manic search for perfection.

The result of the Vega-Ocasek 'marriage' makes "Saturn Strip" both very commercial (it’s the first of two albums Vega recorded for a major label, of course, Elektra, for which Ric Ocasek’s Cars were working), but possibly the best of the American Hero's twenty-five-year career, probably better (and not just in my opinion) than the 'more titled' "Collision Drive". The fact remains that the taste for the alternative (which will lead Vega to desire escaping from the majors) pushes fans to favor and support more complex, daring, less market-oriented works, but all of this cannot (and does not) detract from what is undoubtedly a great album. Even for a major. And even if it is for a major.

(1) thanks to vortex