Cars Magic

The Cars’ fifth album Heartbeat City (1984) has appeared to be much easier to get into than Panorama (1980) or Shake It up (1981). Those albums surely contain some awesome stuff, but at this moment I find Heartbeat City a bit more enjoyable.

Heartbeat City is a real 80s record with extremely loud drum sounds and lots of synthesizer. At first it is a bit tough with those drums. They’re so… big. But you’ll get used to them. And when you start listening to these tracks, you’ll forget the entire drums and focus on the great melodies and all the magic instead.

Heartbeat City is an impressive mixture of darkness and light. There are darker songs like Hello Again, Stranger Eyes, and It's Not the Night, and brighter songs like Looking for Love, Magic, and You Might Think. Finally, there’s Drive. (What should I say about that song...) Well, it surely is very good. On the other hand, it’s a bit sad that it’s the only Cars song people hear these days, because radios (at least in Finland) don’t seem to play any other songs from this amazing band. The Cars deserve to be treated better by Finnish radio.

All in all, this album is excellent. All songs are very good in every way. I especially enjoy Ric Ocasek’s quirky vocal style. On this album Ocasek’s vocals are even more delightful than on earlier Cars albums, I think. It’s pretty amazing how sweet and pretty it can get when singing in new wave style!

More Cars blabber will certainly come later (I think I’ll talk about something else for a change, too…).

The Cars at MySpace