Ric Ocasek
Beatitude

At this point, the (few) readers of my reviews might have thought (hoped? feared?) that I would finally venture into the review of "Heartbeat City" from 1984, probably the Cars' most famous album outside the USA. Instead, I’m biding my time with a bit of sacred cheekiness and reviewing Ric Ocasek's first solo album, dated 1982.

As I’ve already written, from '78 to '81, he and his Cars churned out a whopping 4 consecutive albums, and this work, for Ocasek - the author of all the Cars' songs - represents thus the fifth consecutive in 5 years. But that's not all: during that time, the lanky Ric even produced a sea of records, including the second album by Suicide and the early works of the True American Hero Alan Vega...

In short, after so much work, Ocasek realizes that being stuck on a teenager’s pimpled wall along with his 4 friends is still enjoyable, yes, but is beginning to not be enough. For this reason, alongside Cars' productions, he embarked on a more mysterious, alternative musical journey, hence the engagement with Suicide; hence, "Shoo Be Doo" appears on a new wave album like "Candy-O"... Ric tried to merge the two halves of himself into the album "Panorama", but the attempt was timid and failed, risking damaging the "good name" and losing the royalties that a successful band like the Cars had earned with two splendid hit-laden albums. Ric perhaps realizes that the diverse musical container that is The Cars is not diverse enough to contain all of his taste. And so he convinces himself that if he wants to dare with music, it's better to do so under his own name, without putting at risk the rock star lifestyle of the other 4 bandmates.

In "Jimmy Jimmy", the keys act as all the instruments, the usual program is the drums, and a robot replaces the carschoruses. It’s structurally a twin copy of the song "Panorama", but the sound is more open, approachable for untrained ears. "Something To Grab For", on the other hand, is a perfect carsong, and was cheekily the album's single, moreover a very successful single. Here, however, the musical depth of the Cars is missing. One ought to imagine this carsong played with the carsound. "Prove" is finally the first track to not resemble anything before it: the result is almost funky in the verses, very subdued in the chorus, very (very much) far from rock when that saxophone comes out... You keep listening to the rest of the track and wonder if that is indeed Ocasek... "I Can't Wait" is his playful song locked in puzzle pieces and reassembled according to the taste of a nativity angel. "Connect Up To Me" is, at the same time, expansive and tight, thanks almost entirely to the keyboards. It's even a 7 min and 40 sec track that shows you that in the basement there can also be a sky to race through.

The beginning of "A Quick One" seems sufficiently boring for a skip, but if you have the bit of patience Ric needs, here comes that nice little song that seems exactly like one of his typical ones... But something has really changed, and Ric decides not to fall into his own clichés... Everything so far is catchy without at all being simplistic. From here on the album slows down (the famous "B-side effect")... "Out Of Control" has a rather lunar soundscape on which Ocasek flaunts an excellent interpretation (!) The pace has slowed, as we said, but there's no boredom, rather perhaps it becomes even more interesting, because it sheds "45rpm needs"... In "Take A Walk" you indeed take a stroll down a path made of keys, and at every key, at every step, a different sound creature pops out from who knows where. More or less what happens in the following "Sneak Attack", only here Miss Ocasek in her red shoes prefers to hop merrily rather than stroll. The chorus is delightfully sweet, colorful as a Yes album cover, and the interpretation is not by Ric Ocasek but by Peter Pan himself. The cherry on top is "Time Bomb", where Ocasek sounds like Roger Waters. A minute and 2/3 of conscious slowness, two minutes of psychedelic anger, 20 seconds of gritted teeth, and a minute and a second of guitar delirium from the MIR space station.

In the end, we can say that Ocasek in 1982 hasn’t really changed: he’s simply stepped out of the space-time bubble of new wave, and re-embraced "all" music... He’s shed, like a reptile sheds old skin, but not for this has he turned into a rabbit! Very few liked this album (with the exception of "Something To Grab For"), because his audience was too accustomed to "that Ocasek" they always knew. This work, excellent to say the least, nonetheless served Ocasek to "train," to compose songs for the Cars that could sound new, different from the others, yet at the same time be immediately catchy on first listen, as they had accustomed their fans. Like when you find yourself in a new car, even one highly performing, and you're yet to understand its limits and what spectacular things you can do with it, so you try, you experience, you experiment...

This album, in which Ocasek sings excellently, is thus full of less immediately grabbing songs but not for this less inspired: the classic album that grows strong on the second listen, or the third, the fourth, the thousandth... Perhaps, after you listen to them, you don’t even remember them, but inside you know that they genuinely moved you.

If you don't believe it or do believe it, that’s how it is.

Happy listening.