Original Album Series [5 Pack]

It always makes me chuckle when people are surprised that these box set recordings are as good as the originals. They are exactly the same.....the difference of course is the packaging.Great value, 5 albums for the price of one. I didn't have any Cars in my collection. Now I have 5. Good music and affordable.

Very unusually for this series, the albums featured here are the band's first five, from their 1978 debut to 1984's Heartbeat City and as always when you get a complete sequence of recordings, part of the fascination is hearing the progression from album to album. In fairness, there isn't actually too much progression here, at least not when you compare them to contemporary New York bands like Talking Heads who moved over the same period from edgy pop to funky R&B. The Cars always seemed to be a little bit safe and sanitised and that surely accounted for their greater popularity in the US compared to their US new wave peers, albeit at the cost of less success in the UK and much much less critical acclaim generally. So why buy this set? Well simply because they really were rather terrific at doing what they did! The first three albums here are a little too polished maybe, but still jam packed with catchy pop tunes and great keyboard/synth riffs, courtesy of Ric Ocasek and Greg Hawkes, and the production is excellent particularly when the tracks are allowed to run into one another. The 4th album is perhaps the weakest here although peversely giving them their first Top 10 US single and the 5th is also notable mainly for the singles including the anthemic "Drive". These albums may be period pieces, but they are also outstanding examples of US pop music of that time.

A good collection of albums from a great band.

This is worth four stars purely for the first album - which is a classic - but it is hardly surprising that they had very little success after that. The song writing is very thin gruel indeed. And Drive is exactly what it seemed at the time - completely out of the blue and at odds with the rest of their output. You might as well just buy the first album. - The Cars.

I used to get a bit fed up of hearing 'Drive' so much, especially on compilations, and tended to write them off as a one song soft rock outfit. But then I picked up one of their cds in a charity shop and realised that they were more than that. They actually wrote some decent rock songs as well. When I saw this box set at well under a tenner I decided to give them another go and wasn't disappointed. If you like a good rock song these five albums will certainly come up with the goods and will leave you humming one or two of the other songs that 'Drive' tends to overshadow. Recommended.

Described as punk, I'd put it more as halfway between Hipsway and Prefab Sprout. I really like this band never having come across them before. Like so many, the vocals are buried pretty deep in the mix, so be prepared to listen carefully. There's some quite clever stuff in these. Enjoy!

I was put off buying this for a while by some of the reviews that suggested the discs might not sound good. Finally bought it and they sound fine. The first album sounds the same as the one in the deluxe reissue. Heartbeat City sounds the same as my original cd. I mainly bought it for the middle three discs and am more than happy with them.

Excellent songs and music, listened to the cars way back in the 80's, still have some vinyl albums, now, the ones I couldn't find for many years, I have it complete thanks to theses CD's, just lay back listen and enjoy, what more do you want, move to the music, it's great, you gotta move that way....