Candy-O (The Cars, 1979)

The Cars are not the easiest band to classify. They aren't new wave or punk, nor are they purely rock and roll. The band came out of nowhere around 1977, with only drummer David Robinson having any claim to their musical ancestors. As time went on they became a mainstay of 1980's pop, but at the time of their second album, Candy-O, the Cars were very much in the midst of an identity crisis. Each band member brought their own style: Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr traded sweet and sour vocals, Eliot Easton laid down classic rock guitar riffs, Greg Hawkes added new-wavey splashes of synth, and Robinson was stamped his beat on to each track. In many ways, Candy-O is a refinement of their landmark first album, but it doesn't get anywhere near the level of airplay. Even the Cars themselves shied away from giving the album any representation on their original greatest hits package from 1986, including only the opener, "Let's Go". That's too bad, because just about every track here gives the first album a run for its money. Even the weird connecting track "Shoo Be Doo" is this strange missing link that makes the album flow from "Double Life" to the title track.

Candy-O was one of the last Cars album I acquired. I started early on (high school!) with the first album, Panorama, Door to Door and Shake It Up. I think I was too nervous about what my parents would say about the cover to go after this one! If you can get past the cover art (or can't get enough of it!) this makes a good second pick, following the first album. Panorama is a little tepid and a poor starting point, Heartbeat City and Shake It Up are uneven between big hits and filler, and Door to Door just isn't that good.

However if you consider yourself a good Cars fan, the reunion album Move Like This is surprisingly good. Also surprising is that they even did a reunion album. There was a lot of post-breakup acrimony that made me put the band near the bottom of any list of "likely to reunite" bands. Even around 2000 they still seemed annoyed with each other, as shows in the bonus features of a DVD they released around that time. The death of Orr pushed them even lower on the list. With Easton's involvement in Credence Clearwater Revisted, Ocasek's transformation into a big-time producer, and quasi-reunions (the "new" Cars) with Todd Rundgren, the 2011 full-fledged reunion was indeed a shocker.