Ric Ocasek
Nexterday

I will undoubtedly sound pretentious, but I really want to say it: although he is not among my favorite artists, I think it's only fair to say that since he recorded his "To Record Only Water For Ten Days," Mr. Frusciante John has (partially) changed the world of certain music. More and more artists are recording albums at home... Examples? Billy Corgan, or the wonderful "Blinking Lights And Other Revelations" by the Eels. And the number of works made just to be distributed on the web is constantly increasing. Easy examples? Frusciante himself and also the Smashing Pumpkins, with their songs that only found a home in the cd2 of their hits collection after the band's dissolution.

Ocasek, who after "Troublizing" got a top job at Geffen Records but fled desperately after a few months because he deemed the place too little 'alternative', founded his label, Sanctuary, to produce new talents, and gave it a shot personally in 2005 with this "Nexterday", produced in the manner of "mainstream rockers" Frusciante and Corgan. This work was initially destined for the web, but then - it's said due to the insistence of people working inside Sanctuary - a reconsideration was made in favor of traditional distribution channels.

In "Crackpot" you can perfectly taste the homemade flavor, and so throughout the album. But, after all, hasn't Ocasek always been a minimalist in verses and atmospheres? So what's wrong if even the arrangements are bare bones? The fact is that, in some cases, like perhaps for this "Crackpot", the value of the tracks emerges more if the piece is played and produced "minimally." And this is a song that's beautiful and worth listening to ten times.

"Bottom Dollar" is a perfect little Ocasek-style song, humming a smooth tune. A very guitar-driven chorus (like in the early Cars days, and without the hard aspirations of "Troublizing", the guitars are back in the forefront compared to the keyboards), literally pilfered from "Tonight She Comes" by the Cars. In the end, you realize that the verses, like many carsongs, ARE the true chorus, while the chorus - what is technically called that - would be called "special" in a normal song.

With "Don't Lose Me", the new wave of the Cars' early albums is back. It's fun in the verses, with guitars keeping/making the rhythm, keyboards "gushing", and a drum pattern so simple that even a Commodore 64 could play it consistently; a simple but very original guitar solo in its transitions, like those he used to have Elliot Easton play. How many times have I replayed this song?

"In A Little Bit": again, something dark in a simple song à la Ocasek. A keyboard resembling a xylophone, a whiny guitar arpeggio in the chorus, secondary and tertiary voices, harmonicist keyboards "floating" "beneath" the song. 2 minutes and 50 seconds, enough to please even the inattentive listener without boring them. Yet, inside, there's good stuff.

An intriguing bass line, acoustics that "cut" the chords in half, the usual mule-like drums, an electric guitar pulling out 2 notes, always the same, increasingly echoing; keyboards still not intersecting with the song, but flowing at a lower level, subterranean rivers of notes. A haunting one-word chorus, stated, whispered, suggested, sighed: this is "Silver". Plus, an odd ending with a deep-red sort of carousel keyboard.

"Come On" is the most beautiful song on the album if you love the funnier songs. This one is luminously playful, simply perfect, for how it starts, how it continues, for the chorus, for the special, for how it ends, for how it starts again (I put it back on...)...

"I'm Thinking" is a pseudo-folk guitar song, nothing special and nothing unbearable. An Ocasek, polite and smugly nostalgic (or nostalgically smug?), who still holds his nice-guy voice from '49 over the music and then spreads it through the chorus backing vocals.

If you like "strange stuff," then "Carousel" is the most beautiful song on the album. It is, in my opinion, the evolution of the species of Ocasek's spokenword songs. A bass line and guitar arpeggio that become a loop. Ric recites singing, trying to put singing at the service of reciting. Then a magic flute is heard from afar, and a chorus of gnomes from inside the forest... It had been quite a while since he came out with findings of this caliber, he who in his music was perhaps a bit mannerist and maybe even predictable.

"Heard About You" is the perfect song on the album if you prefer mid-tempos. Ocasek doesn't succumb to the temptation to trivialize the motif, strictly adhering to the drum and his rhythm guitar times. A bit monotonous throughout the album (after all, he hasn't recorded his voice since 1997), and in this track in particular, mainly almost unlistenable in the chorus... You feel the need for a more expressive, warm voice. In short, if this had been a Cars album, it would have been another gem in the hands-vocal cords of bassist Benjaminn Orr.

Autumnal, "windy", seemingly calm, "Please Don't Let Me Down". A confidential chorus. Byrds-like guitar advances hand in hand with mother keyboard in a very delicate solo... Again bass (played by a certain Darryl Jenifer), after all, the real protagonist of the music on this CD - along with the "computer programming" for a drum that always and only goes "tu-ta tuttuttà, tu-ta tuttuttà..." -, like never before in the albums of the Cars and Ocasek himself.

"It Gets Crazy" comes straight from "Door To Door" and from what's nocturnal, restless in the chill appearance of the American night. Blues guitar howling. The first song on the album ending in a guitar fade, and the last on the CD... Like, in its own way, the fade-solo at the end of the last track on the first Cars LP, "All Mixed Up"...

This album is certainly, along with "This Side Of Paradise," the most inspired of Ocasek's career, and it's much more imaginative, complex than "Troublizing." If in the previous one Ocasek was quite a damned and arrogant rocker, ready to make the guitars spit fire (and at least once in career-life you really need it!), now he's a high-level East American "pop-rock chansonnier", today I'd dare say equal (don't kill me) to the most famous of New York men with a guitar in hand...

Listen to believe.

"Nexterday" is homemade: the 'underproduction' in some tracks is a flaw; in other tracks, however, it's a merit from a diametrically opposed point of view, namely the total absence of overproduction. A bit like grandma's preserves, the homemade ones: if you don't die of botulism, they're exquisite...
Unfortunately for the writer, production (light though it may be) has its purpose, and just for this "Nexterday" doesn't get 5 stars. Certainly, things would have been different if the artist were called Springsteen and the CD "Nebraska" (also because the music genre would have been more fitting for DIY).

It's pleasing for those who, like me, esteem Ocasek, that this author in America is considered a 'cult' artist and that this album of his is regarded as an excellent work, but not 5 stars: these tracks have a superb core structure, the most polished Ocasek seen in twenty years, but this skeleton lacks muscles and blood: the Cars, Easton's guitar, Hawkes' keyboards - playing throughout the album but surely not as he would like, being a virtuoso and someone who musically "imposes himself" - and, above all, Benjaminn Orr's warm, romantic, melodious, and steady voice.