The Cars - Panorama

I love third albums. When you look at the careers of most bands, I think you will notice that album number three often shows the performer at their most challenging, experimental, confident, or downright desperate.
Think about it: an artist will usually spend their entire life creating that first album (metaphorically speaking) while album number two tends to contain the leftovers. By the third album, you’ll see the band getting bored with their old formula and taking steps in trying to change it.
Radiohead’s third? OK Computer.
Jimi Hendrix? Electric Ladyland.
Shaun Cassidy? Under Wraps.Well, not every artist fits into this formula of turning things upside down.
But The Cars did, and it shows in the wonderful pretention that is their third album Panorama. David Robinson’s drums, which were a wonderful contradiction of robotic timekeeping fueled through a real live analog kit, are replaced with an electronic one, thereby erasing any evidence that it was indeed Robinson performing.
The liner notes state as such, but they also say that he served as the “art director” for the album, so who knows what his workload was like.
And then there’s Benjamin Orr, the velvet-throated co-singer who crooned on some of the band’s most notable tracks. His role in Panorama is reduced too, leaving the quirky Ric Ocasek as the primary vocalist throughout the album.
This is understandable, I suppose, when one considers that Ocasek penned all of the tracks. There is so much nonsensical “art” sticking out of his lyrics (“I want to float like Euripides/All vision’s in tact”) that there’s no way anyone else would consider tackling them.
Seriously, one can imagine the dialogue taking place during rehearsals (“Dude, I have no idea what this means. Why don’t you just sing it?”) that left Ocasek as the default guy. Gone are the simple laments of his best friend’s girl, moving in stereo, or liking the nightlife, baby. Ocasek replaces them with big, meaningful couplets that are more silly than clever.
Being the primary creative muse also means that he would become the fall guy if Panorama stiffed. And it did; The Cars third release ended up becoming their worst in terms of actual sales and that’s because there’s barely a hit to be found on it. Oh sure, “Touch & Go” briefly touched the top forty, but not enough to require a follow-up and, more importantly, not enough to get people to buy Panorama.
Regardless of all of this shit working against it, I happen to love Panorama. Even upon its original release, I liked the experimentation, the challenges, the pretentiousness…I liked it all. None of my friends did; their reaction was similar to the general public’s, so I felt a little more like a “true fan” with every subsequent spin. While I watched fans of the debut and Candy O fall by the wayside after hearing Panorama, I stuck it out with the hopes that The Cars would turn into that artsy band from Boston financed by the success of their first two albums.
The music here, as synth focused as it is, proves to be very rewarding. There’s a wide pallet of sounds within those keys and guitarist Elliot Easton, seemingly knowing his role is limited on the album in many regards, makes the most out of every single solo. The rhythm guitars also benefit from the focus on Greg Hawkes synth-work. Each six string sounds like it utilized a different guitar or amplifier, creating wonderful varieties as a result.
Even with all of this blatant pretension floating around, I’ll be goddamned if Ocasek doesn’t come within an eyelash of actually succeeding in making that arty record he envisioned. Panorama may be a departure from The Cars or Candy O, but it’s just as consistent as them. And like those aforementioned classics, I don’t find myself skipping ahead; it works well as an entire album with plenty of hooks that take repeated listens to discover.