Back Behind the Wheel

Back in October, in a post entitled 'Nothing But The Hits', I went on about several compilation albums that I enjoyed by bands I had no real intention of investigating further. One of those was the Cars. Naturally, when I saw their first five albums going for just over a tenner for the lot over the Christmas period, I bought them. I should have picked Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for that article instead.

The reason I bring this false prediction of my own shopping habits up is that by chance I came across the Cars' new song yesterday - their first new music in over 20 years. The video doesn't seem to feature the band themselves at all, which may be a sensible move for a bunch of lads in their early 60s/late 50s and whose best-looking member - bassist/vocalist Benjamin Orr - died a decade ago.

Sad Song, for that is the song in question, is actually really good. It's clearly looking to emulate whatever made the Cars' self-titled debut such a huge, huge success in the US. The guitar tone and handclaps in the intro are straight from 1978 and singer/songwriter Ric Ocasek hasn't lost his knack for a pop hook, or somewhat banal lyrics. To a youngster, it may sound like a bunch of old tossers ripping off the Killers - to which we can happily beat them over the back of the head and point out the Cars had nailed that sound down decades prior, something which I'm sure Brandon Flowers has acknowledged several times.

While the band may mean little in the UK beyond their two hits (My Best Friend's Girl and Drive), The Cars went six times Platinum at home, unsurprising given just about every track sounds like a single and is doutbtless well at home on radio. One of the first American bands to really take off on the back of the 'New Wave', the band had been on the Boston Scene for the best part of a decade - drummer David Robinson was best known for being in the initial line up for the Modern Lovers, alongside future Talking Heads' member Jerry Harrison.

Almost inevitably, the debut set the bar at a height they struggled to match until working with Mutt Lange (a man I insist peaked when he worked with XTC on their This Is Pop? single) for 1984's Heartbeat City. Despite it selling millions, it's dated production hasn't been kind, with (to these ears) only You Might Think, Magic and the title track aging gracefully.

After becoming MTV stars on the back of that album and the Greatest Hits compilation, they knocked out a final album that I've never read a good word about and split. Ocasek most notably went on to produce some of Weezer's early albums and enjoyed being married to a supermodel while staying so thin, he's one of the few healthy people in the world who could call me 'Porky'.