Benjamin Orr

As much as I love the Cars, and as much as my personal history is entwined with the band's music, I find it impossible to assign five stars to a six-album box set in which two albums are all-time classics, two others are strong and enjoyable, the fifth is hit and miss, and the sixth is unfortunately disposable. I am not going to treat the rather mediocre "Door to Door" as a five-star work simply because it's combined with the sublime albums "The Cars" and "Candy-O" in this compilation. "Heartbeat City" also sounds very dated, in my opinion, and overproduced to the point of embarrassment at times. The title track is a great song, and the three hit singles are so catchy that they overcome the cliched 80s production issues, but the rest of the album is cloying and at times un-Cars-like. "Panorama," which was the Cars' attempt to indulge their edgy, more experimental side, is solid and at times mesmerizing, but still inferior in song quality to the first two gems. "Shake It Up" strikes me as "Heartbeat City" done right: unabashedly commercial, but still proudly displaying "hooky but weird" essence of the band. Final note: Calling this set "The Elektra Years" is rather silly, since until the Cars' comeback album 25 years later, the Elektra years had been the *only* years.

The albums are stronger as a whole than as “singles” and/or specific tracks played separately. The FIRST TWO albums are far and away the best, but even the lesser appreciated albums are worthy in their own ways. Panorama may not be super radio friendly but it is cool and somewhat dark and doesn’t pander to pop sensibilities. Shake It Up was more popular and yielded more MTV play at the time, but both of these albums failed to viscerally connect the same way as the first two. HEARTBEAT CITY brought em back and approached the first two albums in strength and consistency, in my humble opinion. All of the albums are with a listen and each of them has a gem or three, but their earliest material is their best. The real argument is which is stronger, The Cars or Candy-O? If I could only take 10 albums to listen to for all of eternity, they both might make it.

If you appreciate what this band has done for the future of music, if you appreciate some of the best rock in decades then do yourself a favor and buy this and then buy a copy for a good friend.

So glad to see this! Sounds great! Hope to see them in the summer 2016!!!

why did they even bother?

The album is called “Panorama” (not “The Panorama”).