Give 'Em Some Slack: Ric Ocasek's 8 Best Solo Songs (Critic's Picks)

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Here are eight tracks that define RicOcasek's solo aesthetic

The late singer-songwriter-guitarist, in his New York apartment, exercised such autocratic control that to this day fans think he sang everything. Which does the legacy of bassist Benjamin Orr -- vocalist on “Just What I Needed,” “Let’s Go” and “Drive,” among others -- no favors.

Yet at the peak of the Boston quintet’s pre-MTV era, Ocasek produced acts that didn’t need his ministrations so much as a gentle prod toward a menacing intelligibility. Suicide’s sophomore album, for example, benefitted from having a pair of ears that understood how, to quote one of his most cynical early lyrics, -- and, more importantly, how alienation needed the looks and the hooks just so.

In the same way that The Cars introduced touches of Roxy Music and Wire to American youth, Ocasek solo presented poptastic appropriations of his production clientele. An outlet for songs he couldn’t fit on Cars albums, a chemistry set with which he’d test aural gewgaws and sonic interventions, the first two Ocasek solo albums aren’t fresh starts: they’re addenda to an otherwise fertile recording career. These eight tracks define his solo aesthetic.

 

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