It's like 1979 all over again. With its clenched-distortion guitar hook and airy come-hither chorus, "The Next Right Moment" – the first song on the new solo album by the Cars' main-wheel man, Ric Ocasek – is the spitting, turn-of-the-'80s image of that band's black-pearl melodic polish and cat's-purr locomotion. And that's no bad thing. Ocasek's biggest hits with the Cars were always catchy but disquieting things: airtight rock candy, lightly but artfully scarred with '60s-garagerock and avant-punk tension.
third album,
Panorama, and the spacey, muscled menace of the Smashing Pumpkins'
Siamese Dream. The frosty, distant tone of Ocasek's wordplay can seem portentous in those songs where the melody doesn't hold taut ("Situation" and the mostly spoken-word "Society Trance"). But "Hang On Tight," "Not Shocked" and the title track reaffirm Ocasek's mastery of the tempered, insinuating gesture: the creeping familiarity of a repetitive riff, glancing splashes of bright choral fun.
Since his earliest days with the Jam, Paul Weller has soaked his records in the iconography of vintage rock and R&B. The title of his latest outing comes from an early '60s Blue Note LP by saxophonist Ike Quebec, and the harsh, cutting quality of the guitars on "Heavy Soul (Pt. 1)" and "Peacock Suit" evokes the crusty proto-Jam swagger of '60s U.K. freak-beat bands like the Creation and John's Children. But raw isn't always riveting; whiny strings and stark, boxy guitar distortion do not suit the tiptoe tension of "Up in Suze's Room." The problem with "I Should Have Been There to Inspire You," a slow-burn ballad of big regret, is too much understatement. A show of guilt in the arrangemént, a little tear-jerking kitsch, would have made a difference.
Still, as mixed bags go, Heavy Soul is worth its weight in short, smart pleasures like "Friday Street," "Mermaids" and "As You Lean Into the Light" – day-glo-sunset pop and bluesy melodrama in the fondly remembered late '60s and early '70s manner of the Kinks, the Move and Traffic. If it doesn't add up to prime solo Weller – go back to Wild Wood and Stanley Road – it's still got spit 'n' shine. (RS 767)
DAVID FRICKE
