THE CARS

Panorama

(Elektra)

One morning about two years ago the clock radio woke me with the drive-time jock in mid-ramble. The program director, the jock gushed, thought so highly of a new album from a new group from Boston that his imperial edict was: Play Any Cut! (Rare enthusiasm from a P.D., to be sure.) As I recall, my man played “My Best Friend’s Girl” because he liked the title. I liked the tune. Enter the Cars, with as they say in the Motor City, the hammer down.

If it wasn’t just what you needed, someone certainly did, because that first record—sharp, novel, and energetic—is selling yet. Their blending of middle Velvet Underground with early Roxy Music (out of Outre' by Heavy Manners) was fine and firm while it was fresh, but Panorama is two releases and many millions of sales later and the Cars are now the royalty of technorock, colonial division. So why am I falling asleep under the headphones?