The New Cars: It's Alive! : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Lacking the Cars' singer-guitarist Ric Ocasek, drummer Dave Robinson and late singer-bassist Ben Orr, the New Cars hit the road with too many replacement parts. On this roughly recorded live set, former Utopia bassist Kasim Sulton and ex-Tubes drummer Prairie Prince join two original Cars, keyboardist Greg Hawkes and lead guitarist Elliot Easton, plus, most strangely, new frontman Todd Rundgren. Once counted among rock's most multitalented iconoclasts, Rundgren here morphs his distinctive tenor into unnerving facsimiles of both Ocasek and Orr, not only on "My Best Friend's Girl" and "Drive" but also on his own power-pop classic "I Saw the Light" and the Nazz's psych-rock nugget "Open My Eyes." Like the con- cert material, the three newly recorded studio cuts mimic the Cars' classic lineup without adding much to their legacy beyond a little extra guitar volume (rockers "Not Tonight" and "More") and some synth updates (the ballad "Warm"). Better call AAA.