The Cars - Candy-O


You know what doesn't have war or death or exploitation or economics? The Cars' sophomore album Candy-O. It doesn't have some important letter Ms either, and that needs some explanation.

I'm absolutely convinced he meant "cadmium car" in Shoo Be Doo and "germanium lover" in The Dangerous Type because i don't think "cadium" is actually a word at all and she definitely doesn't seem like the kind of girl who waters the "geraniums" on her front porch. This album is about a pinup girl named Candy-O who loves cruising around looking for nighttime excitement in her futuristic and definitely made out of metal automobile, leaving Rik to desperately try to keep up.

They scrapped all the leftovers from the first album and said "maybe let's tone down the multi-tracked vocals and over production for this one." It's thin and quirky, youthful but not juvenile. A lot of people didn't like it, but more people did and i gotta say it's a fantastic sounding album for its obvious concept. The keyboards and sound effects are ridiculous, the guitars are totally raunchy, the beats are frantic, and Rik has the quintessential New Wave out of his depth vocal style. It sounds like my astigmatism exacerbating the flashing neon lights on a rainy night driving through the city, so that's fun.

It's way better than Heartbeat City, but i will cop to agreeing that it isn't as exciting as their first. Elektra wanted to shelve it for a while, but they said "hell no, why you trying to hold us back? It's what we made, publish the thing already!" It certainly doesn't sound like it needed more time in the incubator, it's not actually missing anything in terms of instrumentation or arranging, and if anything its actually a bit weirder than the first album. Not as weird as Panorama, but there's a lot of clearly improvised keyboards and futuristic (for the time) noises. You could probably be "meh" on a song or two, but as an overall album it's stellar. I love The Cars anyway, but its album value would be pretty much inarguable even if i didn't. Delightful.

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