 The Carpenters After four good, solid albums of sparkling production and beautiful singing, The Carpenters were apparently ready to try a concept album, although in true Carpenters fashion, they drain all the possible edge out of that idea and create Now & Then, a ridiculous misfire of an album that features some of their very best moments but almost all of their very worst. Released in 1973, it is a "half and half" album: half new material (Side A), half (shudder) "golden olides" (Side B). The new stuff is uniformly excellent, six straight tracks of blissful Carpenters magic, adorned by Richard's pristine production and Karen's always haunting voice. Some have expressed distaste for "Sing," the opening cut and as I recall, a "Sesame Street" favorite, but I've always been a sucker for its simple flute melody and children's chorus. Can't help it, I love it. "This Masquerade" is one of my two or three favorite Carpenters recordings of all time, inexplicably left off the singles album (maybe it wasn't a single, duh?) but easily beating any other version of the song I've ever heard. Karen Carpenter had a way of managing to be sultry, desperate, and sexy while simultaneously seeming anemic, letter-perfect, and laughable, but I suppose the only thing that matters is that these songs sound good. They're a pleasure to hear time and again in ways that, say, the American Breed or Grand Funk are not. "Heather" is a pretty instrumental showcasing Richard's orchestrating skills (and I'd say it's pretty bold to put an instrumental as track 3 on a Carpenters album), leading into "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)," featuring Hal Blaine on drums and not nearly as irritating as you'd imagine. It's whiter than white, sure, and without question there are Brownie troops across the country who do more spirited versions at retreat weekends, but it still works. You gotta love any group that imagines a flute solo in the middle of what is supposed to be a Cajun showstopper. This is followed by the neglected Carpenters ballad "I Can't Make Music," which is back-to-back with the "golden oldies" tribute "Yesterday Once More," a song I could listen to a hundred times in a row despite the ridiculously dramatic line "Every shing-a-ling-a-ling that they're startin' to sing – so fine." Just the idea of Richard and Karen meticulously harmonizing on the phrase "shing-a-ling-a-ling" makes me laugh sadistically every time, singing along "shuck-a-luck-a-luck" and "tronk-a-lonk-a-lonk" just to make it seem even more awkward. Yet this imagined awkwardness doesn't prepare even the most jaded listener for the musical holocaust to come. The second half of the album features a miserable medley of oldies interspersed with phony nostalgic "radio patter" courtesy lead guitarist Tony Peluso. As bad as he is on the album, I blame Richard Carpenter personally for the lack of fun here, even though "Fun, Fun, Fun" is included. I've heard aerobics albums that do a better job covering these types of songs, and Karen's voice is particularly ill-served on songs like "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Johnny Angel." Richard makes an utter ass out of himself on "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" and especially "Deadman's Curve," which features perhaps the most insincere spoken-word passage ever recorded. Don't ever hire this man to do an Audio Book, unless it's one of those hypnotic ones, in which case, still don't. The medley has its moments: ""The End of the World," "Our Day Will Come," and "One Fine Day," which almost manages to rock. But the whole thing is utterly sunk by the radio interludes that crop up between nearly every song, including a particularly bad segment that attempts to recreate a person calling in with an answer to an on-air trivia question – and the caller is wrong. I mean, if you're faking it, shouldn't you at least make something listenable? Unless you're a big fan of oldies radio and/or American Graffiti, this whole part of the album will leave you feeling quite shortchanged, even if you're a huge Carpenters fan. Just goes to show, you can't fake a sense of humor. The Carpenters are not the type of band that could ever have "cut loose," and this album proves it for eternity. Even the completist in me won't let me keep this album alongside the other meticulously remastered Carpenters CDs I've picked up. I suppose I could just program around the horrid parts, but I can't bring myself to have anything that horrid in my collection. The songs I do love, I'll live without in protest to Richard Carpenter's endlessly baffling lack of real taste. Maybe the Carpenters are the ultimate example of "insider art," but sometimes "inside" is far too "inside," the Loud Bassoon notwithstanding.
Review by Boofer Nanahana |