“Giving My Gen-Y Endorsement to The Cars’ Last Album, Move Like This.”

Now, it’s true: the world should hardly be held fully to blame for ignoring this 2011 career-capping Cars LP, as typically these late-era offerings from classic rock bands don’t really cure anything but insomnia. But, really, The Cars have always been a band that was underrated. In general, the first instinct is to pigeonhole them as “new wave,” or tag them as “cute” or “amusing” but not as significant, not as hard-hitting, as the bands with the bigger sound like Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and even Dire Straits, maybe. But they do have their niche and sometimes that succinct, funny and awkward pop song deilivered in classic rock packaging is just the present you need. There’s a sense of sacrifice in how they deliver a set of lines like “She’s my best friend’s girl / She used to be mine” that can be so heartbreaking but also juxtaposed so closely with rapid, bright chord changes and expedited structural shifts (verse/chorus, etc.) They are, in this way, the quintessential post-punk band, and for that reason undeniably influential on ’90s alternative rock, and even grunge bands like Nirvana, at least in terms of song structure, and also certainly the “slacker” zeitgeist which would subvert itself to pop contentedness in the scope of such apparent heartbreak.

At some point during my first listen to Move Like This, I developed the idea that it might be the best Cars album. Actually, it occurred to me right away during the first song, since I’ve never liked any other Cars album, front to back. Opener “Blue Tip” indeed saunters along with wit, style and a solid chord progression, as you’d expect any solid outing from this band to do.

It should be noted, too, however, that variety is in no way lacking in this project, a plaint you could probably level at the band’s early work, if you tried hard enough. Actually, with the sole exception of “Drive,” every single in The Cars discography has almost the exact same style. (In this way, mind you, they’re very much like AC/DC, whose Angus Young once famously said in an interview: “I get tired of people saying we made 11 albums that are all the same… We made 12 albums that are all the same!”) Anyway, on “Too Late,” we get probably the first ever manifestation of guitar feedback in the history of this band, albeit a sonic hardness that’s used sparingly and blended with the mix so as not to distract from the chord scheme, which, here, as everywhere, is the band’s primary calling card. “Keep on Knocking” increases the electric guitar squall significantly and hey, they’re palm muting! Yes, The Cars are palm muting. Stage dives and mosh pits will be reserved for larger venues, if you please. Strings and xylophone adorn “Soon,” a classic ballad in the vein of “Drive” but still distinct for its eclectic instrumentation and pastoral ease.

It’s hard to pick a favorite song on this album but if I had to, I’d probably go with “Sad Song.” And no, this is not because the song is almost stylistically identical to “My Best Friend’s Girl” and even opens, I believe, with almost the exact same guitar part, played on the same guitar. What gives this song its allure to me has in other ways to do, though, with their earlier stuff: the nonchalant way the project has from toggling verse and chorus, helping the whole thing stay fresh and grooving. This has never been a band that tried too hard — when something works it works and there’s never this cumbersome sense of trying to beat a dead horse or milk one idea for all its worth. The writing’s even on the wall in Ric Ocasek’s lyrics: “It’s just a sad song and it won’t take long”. Man, they ain’t lyin’.

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