Panorama

About

“I loved The Velvet Underground <i>and</i> the Carpenter,” Ric Ocasek told an interviewer in 2011. The Cars singer invoked those two groups to describe a dichotomy in the music of The Car, which brought together alt-rock guitar and appealing pop hook. Ocasek’s musical tastes would inform not just his songwriting, but also his producing career, as he’d spend the early 1980s producing outsider acts like the D.C. hardcore band Bad Brain, and Suicide, a confrontational New York duo that wrang terror out of electronic music, and stood no chance of ever getting mainstream radio play. Suicide’s influence is moderately evident on 1980’s <i>Panorama</i>, The Cars’ frosty third album—though the resulting album is closer to early synth-pop European acts like Ultravox, Gary Numan, and Be Bop Deluxe. The opening title track announces <i>Panorama</i>’s harsh intentions by using irregular rhythm, via a jarring shift from 4/4 time to 9/8, and a delay effect in the chorus that makes Ocasek sound robotic. The verses to “Touch and Go,” meanwhile, have a woozy, almost seasick feel, because the bass and drums are in 5/4 time, while the rest of the band is in standard 4/4, which creates an imbalanced feeling. And except for parts of “Misfit Kid,” the band’s trademark stacked harmonies—a trick they learned from producer Roy Thomas Baker—are mostly absent. That puts more focus on Ocasek’s tense vocal, which are deadpan in the style of a film noir hero. And his lyrics move from mysterious to unknowable, including references to “pastel pinned-up sails” in “Gimme Some Slack,” surely the only rock song to ever mention Euripides and Federico Fellini. .

via Apple Music

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