The Cars defined an era, but it’s now three decades in the rear-view mirror. Not that it mattered Wednesday at the sold-out Riviera.

Four of the five original members (founding bassist Ben Orr died in 2000) took their old, new-wave sound out for its first test drive in 24 years, but they saw no reason for updates, makeovers or hip-hop remixes.

There was always something sleekly mechanical about the Boston band, its three-minute pop songs a crisp, gleaming staple of commercial radio from 1978 to 1987; 13 cracked the top-40. Whereas some artists see their songs as living entities that can change over time, the Cars created them as immutable art objects not to be messed with. Their influence can be heard in countless contemporary bands, from Weezer to the Strokes.

On the way to making Death Cab for Cutie’s forthcoming album, “Codes and Keys” (Atlantic), singer Ben Gibbard quit drinking, got married and ended up relocating to Los Angeles, a city he once despised.
       
The dramatic changes were foreshadowed by Death Cab’s bleak 2008 release, “Narrow Stairs.” 

“That record is kind of a fulcrum in my life,” Gibbard says. “So much of the negativity in my life got funneled into it. I realized after the fact that I didn’t want to go any darker. I wanted it to be the bottom for this band and my own emotional spectrum in terms of writing. I had no grandiose plans to turn my life around. But there was this eerie moment ...”
       
It’s a good thing Gibbard has a video of the moment because no one would’ve believed him. He prefaces the story he’s about to tell by asserting, “I am not making this up”:
       
"Around spring of ‘08, I went with my mom to a (Seattle) Mariners game, and I had this very real thought as we were sitting there that my life was about to change. Then a foul ball came flying off the bat and I caught it in my hat. I have the video to prove it – the ball, the hat. It was out of a movie, but it was indicative of something. A couple months later I reconnected with the person who would become my wife.”

The Cars: The new-wave icons have reunited for their first album and tour since the ‘80s, with original members Ric Ocasek, David Robinson, Greg Hawkes and Elliot Easton still making those jittery rhythms sound impossibly cool, 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Riviera, 4746 N. Racine, $48.50; etix.com.

greg@gregkot.com

Paul Simon has played stadiums and festivals. He’s done Central Park. So it was a treat Monday to see one of the most venerated songwriters of the last half-century turn the relatively intimate, sold-out Vic Theatre into his living room.

The 69-year-old singer-songwriter dressed for the occasion in loose-fitting jeans and black T-shirt underneath an unbuttoned shirt. His eight-piece multi-culti band framed him, with Simon at times resembling a crossing guard at a three-way intersection as he directed musical traffic. His foot tapped, his arms waved, he crouched and jutted a guitar toward his musicians, he even played an air washboard solo.

In one sense, the two-hour, 24-song performance played like a mini-history of rhythm, spiraling out from the doo-wop of Simon’s native New York to West Africa down the coast to Capetown and then out to the Caribbean, into Brazil, Memphis and New Orleans. His band of multi-instrumentalists was versatile enough to keep pace with Simon’s game of continental hop-scotch, the singer demonstrating how he synthesized his rhythm journeys into durable pop songs.

Pearl Jam announced Monday it will headline its 20th anniversary concerts Sept. 3-4 at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wis.

Also scheduled to perform are the Strokes, Queens of the Stone Age, Mudhoney, John Doe, Joseph Arthur, Glen Hansard and Liam Finn. All bands are to play both days.

Tickets ($89 reserved, $50 lawn, plus parking and service fees) go on sale May 23 for fans in Pearl Jam’s Ten Club and at 10 a.m. June 4 to the general public. Tickets will be available at the Alpine Valley box office and through Ticketmaster. More information is available at www.pj20.com.

For more on Pearl Jam's 20th anniversary: an interview with Eddie Vedder HERE.

greg@gregkot.com

 

Pearl Jam is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with a flourish: a Cameron Crowe-directed documentary; reissues of its 1993 and ’94 albums “Vs.” and “Vitalogy”; and a forthcoming festival at an as-yet-unannounced location. 

In addition, the band is in the midst of recording sessions for a new studio album, and some members are still neck-deep in side projects – at least one involving a ukulele, of all things. That would belong to singer Eddie Vedder, whose “Ukulele Songs” solo album is due out May 31. A solo tour brings him to the Chicago Theatre on June 28-29.

"I’ve been writing and collecting songs on the ukulele for at least 10 years, so it was time to clear them out of the apartment building and make room for some new occupants,” Vedder says. “I need to make room for the bassoon record.”

2.5 stars (out of 4)

 The name fits. The Cars manufactured sleek, gleaming new-wave jingles, beginning in 1978 with their still-spiffy debut album. Turn on a Cars song, and instantly the world becomes a sea of androgynous boys and girls dressed in vinyl, wearing sunglasses and cruising for anonymous hook-ups.

After nearly three decades apart, the surviving members – Ric Ocasek, Elliot Easton, Greg Hawkes and David Robinson – have reunited for “Move Like This” (Hear Music), their seventh studio album (cofounding bassist Ben Orr died in 2000). Fans who loved the old Cars will find little has changed. Ocasek turns oddball phrases (“I heard your glockenspiel pounding soft”; “The world is full of quackers/And bellybutton rings”) in a deadpan voice well-suited for reading a William Gibson novel aloud. Jittery sixteenth-note rhythms coalesce into choruses fit for an army of androids to shout into space (“Sad Song,” “Free,” “Hits Me,” “Blue Tip”) while Hawkes breaks out his armada of keyboard squiggles and curlicues.

Though the band hired Garret “Jacknife” Lee (whose credits include Weezer, R.E.M. and the Hives) to produce half the album, his tracks sound interchangeable with the band’s self-produced efforts. The band’s ballads were always a bit draggy, and “Move Like This” contains enough slower or midtempo tracks to make it a bumpy listen. Outside of that immaculate first album, the Cars always made better singles anyway, and that’s still true here.

greg@gregkot.com

    One man, one guitar, one big sound. Neil Young orchestrated his solo concert Friday – the first of two-sold shows at the Chicago Theatre – for maximum impact. He started slow and quiet and built to a rafter-rattling finale.

    An early acoustic tune nailed the night’s theme, which focused on contrast and conflict. Instead of blowing out the chorus to sing-along proportion, Young kept “Helpless” shivery and small. Dwarfed against the vastness of an endless Canadian sky described in the song, Young’s tenor conveyed even more vulnerability than usual.

    When the guitarist shifted into electric mode, he also amped up the drama. Young brought an orchestral dimension to the arrangements, expanding the approach he used on his latest solo album, the Daniel Lanois-produced “Le Noise,” to older songs such as “Ohio” and “Down by the River.”

Neil Young: On this solo tour, expect the legendary singer-songwriter to play some loud, voluptuous guitar as he takes on the soundscapes from his latest, Daniel Lanois-produced album, “La Noise,”  8 p.m. Friday-Saturday at Chicago Theatre, 150 N. State St., $43, $63, $103, $128, $173, $253; ticketmaster.com.

greg@gregkot.com

Photos: Robert Johnson, blues legend

Time tends to reduce great artistry to caricature.

Bob Dylan -- wasn’t he a protest singer? The voice of a generation? The guy who provided the soundtrack for world peace and civil rights by writing “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They are A-Changin’ ”?

And what about Robert Johnson? Didn’t he sell his soul to the devil? At some dark crossroads in Mississippi? And then he invented the modern blues?

But Dylan wrote only a handful of protest songs, quickly realizing they were an artistic dead-end, and Johnson never had any documented meetings with Beelzebub. With Johnson’s 100th anniversary arriving Sunday, and Dylan’s 70th birthday on May 24, it’s time to take a fresh look. Myths aren’t why the music of these two artists still has the ability to bowl over listeners who encounter it for the first time. There’s something else, but what exactly?