RockRoast

Over the next few days, I’m going to present several albums that don’t get the kind of recognition I think they deserve. These five records are all fantastic, and throughout the week I’ll be paying them their well-earned respect. They won’t be offered in any strict order, but I tried to arrange them starting with the best known and ending with the most obscure.

Panorama (1980) 
The Cars

Panorama was actually pretty successful in its day, reaching number 5 on Billboard and eventually going platinum. But modern critics seem to view it as a blemish on an otherwise illustrious career. Many current fans of the Cars are casual listeners who simply enjoy the stuff they hear on classic rock radio.

But Panorama has a dark, experimental mood to it that is missing from most other Cars releases. From the groovy yet eerie intro on the title track to the desperate shrieks at the end of “Getting Through,” to the deceptively upbeat synth riff on “Up and Down,” the album is solid the whole way through. Because of the brooding, moodier texture to it, Panorama feels more genuine, possibly because Ric Ocasek’s unconventional, often dispassionate lyrics are finally matched by their musical backdrop. And that musical synergy offers a unique side of pop rock that I haven’t seen successfully recreated anywhere else.

The Cars’ eponymous debut and their 1984 release, Heartbeat City, are usually cited as the band’s high points. But The Cars is too influenced by the album-oriented hard rock of the seventies and Heartbeat City is too influenced by the synth-drenched new wave of the eighties. The best the Cars have to offer is Panorama, halfway between the beginning and the end of their sonic evolution. It’s both punk rock and synth rock, but it’s a perfect stylistic fusion of the two. It’s forty minutes of genius.

Simple Plan’s choice to unpretentiously entitle their newest release “Simple Plan” was an encouraging move. I hoped it was a sign of a band reaching maturity, refreshing its sound, and reinventing itself. Then I heard the album. And I discovered that I was wrong.

I suppose there are a few moments on “Simple Plan” that are indicative of a musical branching-out. But instead of rejuvenating a tired approach to music, the band seemed to be sampling rather than experimenting. “Your Love is a Lie” begins with a hip-hop intro reminiscent of JoJo, “Holding On” is a freakish, unnatural marriage of U2 and Linkin Park, “Time to Say Goodbye” contains a few riffs that I swear I’ve heard on a Green Day record, and the chorus of “The End” sounds so much like Papa Roach that it might as well be a cover.

Despite the striking similarities to other bands, Simple Plan did use a few effects well. Two songs boast techno-inspired intros (“When I’m Gone” and “The End”), and three songs tastefully utilize stringed instruments (“I Can Wait Forever,” “No Love” and “What If”). “Generation” also involves some brass that really shouldn’t have worked as well as it did.

“I Can Wait Forever” is probably the closest Simple Plan has gotten to sounding like a mature band. It’s a nice little power ballad, and, although flawed, it is certainly promising. The strings blend well with the drums and guitars, and the piano outro is a thing of beauty. To complete the sound, vocalist Pierre Bouvier manages to give an unusually emotional performance. The biggest drawback of the song could be the lyrics (“Another day without you with me / Is like a blade that cuts right through me.”)

But then again, the lyrics were a disappointment for the duration of the record. The band members are all in their late twenties now. What they don’t seem to realize is that it’s becoming embarrassing for them to sing about how you don’t know what it’s like to be them and how you can’t change them and how they can’t remember how to smile. It’s time for them to grow up. To be fair, perhaps I should mention that they did try to mix in a few love songs, but that’s not a whole lot better than the rest of their drivel. Everything they wrote about on this album has been written about hundreds of times before. They need to move on.

What I do find interesting about “Simple Plan” is that the beginning and the end of the album are very different. As you start listening, it seems like every song is a blatant attempt at another punk anthem for the rising generation. But as you finish the disc, it seems like the last few songs you’ve heard have all been hold-hands-and-sway ballads. I’m not entirely sure if that was done on purpose, but it works pretty well. The beginning is more energetic and it pulled me in. And despite some of the corny lyrics and cliché melodies, the tail end of the album lifts my spirits. When it’s over I feel pretty good about life.

So I suppose even though “Simple Plan” was disappointing for me, I don’t regret listening to it. The band clearly have a lot of things to work on and polish up, but I guess there’s always a fourth studio album for that.

Best performance: Jeff Stinco, lead guitar (especially on “Your Love is a Lie” and “Take My Hand”)
Worst performance: Chuck Comeau, drums (especially on “Take My Hand” and “Generation”)
Questionable performance: David Desrosiers, bass (I’m assuming they just had him play on three or four songs just so nobody would think he left the band)

Buy it if: You love pop-punk, you’re a hopeless emo kid, or you don’t care about the lyrics in your music.

Score: 4/10

Available at Amazon.com