Move Like This, The Cars

If ever there was a cold gaze of irony, it's Rik Ocasek's.   And who has better earned the right to have one?  The Cars broke at the cusp of Reagan's eighties and hit their stride musically and chartwise as that decade crested -- hard times then for anyone who thought outside of the conservative mode, made worse now by revisionists who have a sizable chunk of the populace convinced that Reagan was a good president or even a decent human being.  Over the past quarter of a century Ocasek has been looking through -- sometimes even over the top of -- his dark glasses and, thankfully, he's written about what he's seen.   On Move Like This, The Cars' first studio album in 24 years, that is a world rightly observed, and skewered, as being "full of quackers and belly button rings."  If that isn't ironic enough for you, then how about this: you can buy Move Like This at Starbucks.

On this album, The Cars pick up their instruments mid-beat and deliver ten cuts that are the very essence of new wave music.  The band is back together minus bassist and co-lead singer Benjamin Orr, who died in 2000.  Ocasek, assuming full frontman duties, delivers vocals that are as deadpan and observational as his own lyrics.  This positions him to shoot such arrows as "you're hung up on your heroes and upon the beast you pray;" "too many clowns claiming everything's all right;" and (my favorite) "they keep you in follow mode," repeated with that delivery that is poised just exactly and perfectly between acidic and indifferent.  But if the lyrics are wry and sharply observed and slightly elliptical in the way that makes new wave ironic, it is the sound that makes new wave new wave.  I cannot imagine hearing a sleeker record this year. 

The style and substance of new wave distills the world lyrically and musically, and few bands are as adept at that as The Cars.  The Cars and Candy O were as fundamental to the soundtrack of the first wave as were Parallel Lines or Freedom of Choice.  Then and now, what distinguishes The Cars is the taut gleam of their production style, which does in fact sound like a car, referencing new wave's industrial beginnings not with Depeche Mode's clank of gears and hammers or Kraftwerk's drone of algebra and electronics but with both the kickstart of a motor and its hum.

Every single cut, even those you may not personally groove to, is tight, building on that one-two punch of rhythm track and guitar-synth that no few decried when The Cars were helping to invent it.  The band's facilitiy with this sound underscores the band's importance in the sound's creation.  Some may have forgotten that The Cars were right there with Talking Heads when these discoveries were being made, but The Cars themselves haven't, and there is a fuck-you edge to Move Like This that is, arguably, the most authentic of new wave stances.  The accomplished quality of Move Like This rings as both confidence and validation.  Like the vehicle of the band's name when it is well-tuned, these Cars move beautifully.

In Your Dreams, Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks brings her A game to In Your Dreams, her first studio album in ten years and one that, depending on your point of view, either establishes her as one of rock and roll's elder statespeople or cements the fact once and for all. Die-hard fans needn't worry, for all of the essential Stevieness from mystical lyrics to flowing gowns are there, but so is the unmistakable authority of forty years of doing this and doing it well. As writer and as singer, a rock singer's voices are intertwined, and Nicks' have never been better. That velvety vamp who purred "thunder only happens when it's raining" has become a songstress wise, rueful, and sometimes breathtaking -- truly the poet goddess that her fans have known her to be all along.

It turns out that the best thing to happen to that voice since Lindsay Buckingham first disappointed its vessel is Dave Stewart. As producer for In Your Dreams Stewart, who knows something about how to weave hypnotic sounds as settings for glorious female voices, performs his duties not as ringmaster but as partner. He gives the diva plenty of room to strut her stuff but doesn't let her caprices take over. One speculates that this was some of the secret to Stewart's success with Annie Lennox, and one wonders what might have happened had Jimmy Iovine taken the approach thirty years ago with Stevie Nicks.

For Nicks. Stewart crafts soundscapes that are lush and rhythmic, often with a guitar-driven twang that underscores the country roots she has always claimed. Secret Love -- a track that Nicks has been hoarding since the Rumours sessions -- bubbles along on delicious interplay between Nicks' shimmering voice and a Mac-influenced rhythm track, while Annabel Lee offers a climactic, bass-driven tale based on Poe. Either cut is exemplary; just exactly what we want from Stevie Nicks. Requisite tales of a different past have a solid presence in Ghosts are Gone and For What It's Worth. However, the album's showstopper is Soldier's Angel. Against chiming guitar, Nicks, her voice at its barest and most harmonic, intones a threnody as the angel, mother, girlfriend, nurse of soldiers everywhere. It's a gorgeous, powerful cut, whose drama is in its simplicity, and whose beauty is the deep truth of mourning.

The poetry of loss infuses In Your Dreams -- sometimes directly, often slyly -- and with such a rich vein to draw from, some will question how any artist who taps into that could fail, perhaps hoping to minimize the accomplishment. But such a criticism is not the only thing Nicks has weathered in her life, and that knowing is the secret of her success not just commercially but artistically. Nicks is directly in line to the throne of rock royalty from a time when rock was truly classic. How can anyone argue with a self-proclaimed "rock and roll woman" whose spirit is demonstrably descended from Janis Joplin? In Your Dreams may not be Nicks' most historical album -- that distinction belongs, probably irretrievably, to Belladonna -- but as the musician who exceeds the icon, it is, so far, her best.